Wednesday 24 October 2018

Austerity ended?

The government’s own statistics show that violent crime has more than doubled in the last five years. It is now at the highest level since comparable records began.
In 2010 Theresa May argued that "nobody should accept a situation where at least 26,000 people fall victim to crime every day." The latest statistics record 10,597,000 incidents of crime in the year-ending September 2017 – or 29,033 a day. She has failed in her crime reduction policy, just as she has failed in nearly every one of her economic, social and environmental policies.
At least she can claim consistency with her Conservative predecessors. Readers may want to reflect on why it is that all post-war Conservative governments have delivered increased crime and reduced numbers of police officers, whilst all Labour governments have increased the number of police officers and cut crime.
Whilst unsolved crimes have topped 2.1 million, the vacancy rate for detectives now stands at more than 5000. Overall police numbers have fallen by another 5% in the last 4 years.
Last year, there were 1,349,154 violent offences compared to 709,000 recorded in 2009.
Of these, nearly 40,000 involved a knife or sharp instrument, more than 20% up on the previous year to the highest on record. The number of homicides, where a knife or sharp instrument was used, also increased by 26% over the previous year.
There was also an 11% increase in offences involving firearms and recorded corrosive substance attacks nearly tripled.
The Home Office’s own reports confirm that the data shows a “shift to youth” involvement in serious violence with an increase in vulnerable groups including homeless, children in care and school-excluded children as “particularly susceptible to drug market recruitment”.
In South Yorkshire, hardly a day goes by without the local media reporting another stabbing, the use of a firearm, or the activity of criminal gangs who are trying to recruit young teenagers in to gang activity, mainly centred around the supply of drugs.
So, what has been the Conservative government’s response to the dramatic increase in violent crime? It announced a Serious Violence Strategy, an Early Intervention and Prevention Fund of £40 million, within which there is an Ending Gang Violence and Exploitation Fund of £300,000.
Wonderful!
Let’s put this in context.
Since 2010, central government funding for youth offending teams has more than halved from £145m in 2010/11 to £72m in 2017/18. Similarly, central government cuts to councils has meant that their spending on crime prevention has also more than halved, from £361m to £172m, and there has been a £387m cut in youth services.
Does no-one in this Conservative government and on the Conservative back-benches think there is no correlation between the massive cuts in expenditure in crime prevention and detection activity and big increases in serious, violent crime? What planet are they on?
The government has also introduced an Offensive Weapons Bill that is going through Parliament at the moment. It includes new offences relating to possessing and selling corrosive substances, selling and distributing and possessing knives and other blades and offensive weapons (like knuckledusters) and bans certain firearms and components.
What is astonishing is that the Bill ignores much of the key evidence contained in a leaked internal Home Office report on the drivers of serious violence. This included compelling evidence that much of the increase in violence had been caused by the government’s own cuts in early intervention initiatives targeted at particularly vulnerable young people.
All the evidence suggests that interventions aimed at supporting the surging number of young people in care, homeless or excluded from school; alongside prevention aimed at educating and supporting parents, carers and teachers would reduce violence among this youth cohort.
Further, the government has simply ignored its own evidence that cuts in police resources are hampering police efforts to tackle the surge in violent crime. The increase in unsolved serious crimes means that there has been a diminishment of the deterrent effect. This is having a serious deleterious effect on public safety and on people’s perception of their own safety.
I hope it will be possible for some important changes to be made to the Bill as it goes through Parliament.
Whenever we are considering policy changes to address problems and challenges, or to exploit new opportunities arising from things like new technology, we ought to look around the world to see if others have had similar problems or opportunities, how they have addressed them, and what lessons can be learned. Too often, energy and resources are committed to reinventing the wheel. This comment applies as much to authorities and agencies in South Yorkshire, as much as it does to the UK government.
In this instance, the Home Office has admitted that, in preparing its new Serious Violence Strategy, it had neglected to learn from others tackling the same issues.
Did it have to travel to the far ends of the world to find successful strategies? No. It just needed to consider the policies and the impact of the internationally renowned Violence Reduction Unit in … Scotland.
In 2005, Scotland had been assessed as the most violent country in the developed world.
Between April 2006 and April 2011, 40 children and teenagers were killed in homicides involving a knife in Scotland. Yet, between 2011 and 2016, that figure fell to just eight. The decline was biggest in Glasgow, which once had one of the highest murder rates in western Europe.
Between 2006 and 2011, 15 children and teenagers were killed with knives in Scotland’s largest city; between 2011 and 2017, none were. Last year, when 35 teenagers were killed by knives in Britain, there was not a single teenage death in Scotland from a knife wound.
Just as important, the Scottish statistics show that there was a decline of more than 70% in the incidence of handling weapons.
This didn’t happen by chance. It didn’t happen because Glasgow teenagers were stuffing deep-fried Mars Bars down their throats instead of stuffing lock-knives in their pockets. It happened because, after considerable research, Scotland adopted a public health approach to knife crime, in which the police work with those in the health, education and social work sectors to address the problem. And, the results so far have been dramatic.
So, I want to see government Ministers and Departments and, locally, South Yorkshire Police and local authorities and all other relevant agencies and voluntary organisations to learn from Scotland - and from any other strategies with successful outcomes - as they develop local responses to the tragic stupidity which is killing local youngsters and leaving local communities insecure and feeling unsafe.

Monday 22 October 2018

Tragic stupidity

The government’s own statistics show that violent crime has more than doubled in the last five years. It is now at the highest level since comparable records began.
In 2010 Theresa May argued that "nobody should accept a situation where at least 26,000 people fall victim to crime every day." The latest statistics record 10,597,000 incidents of crime in the year-ending September 2017 – or 29,033 a day. She has failed in her crime reduction policy, just as she has failed in nearly every one of her economic, social and environmental policies.
At least she can claim consistency with her Conservative predecessors. Readers may want to reflect on why it is that all post-war Conservative governments have delivered increased crime and reduced numbers of police officers, whilst all Labour governments have increased the number of police officers and cut crime.
Whilst unsolved crimes have topped 2.1 million, the vacancy rate for detectives now stands at more than 5000. Overall police numbers have fallen by another 5% in the last 4 years.
Last year, there were 1,349,154 violent offences compared to 709,000 recorded in 2009.
Of these, nearly 40,000 involved a knife or sharp instrument, more than 20% up on the previous year to the highest on record. The number of homicides, where a knife or sharp instrument was used, also increased by 26% over the previous year.
There was also an 11% increase in offences involving firearms and recorded corrosive substance attacks nearly tripled.
The Home Office’s own reports confirm that the data shows a “shift to youth” involvement in serious violence with an increase in vulnerable groups including homeless, children in care and school-excluded children as “particularly susceptible to drug market recruitment”.
In South Yorkshire, hardly a day goes by without the local media reporting another stabbing, the use of a firearm, or the activity of criminal gangs who are trying to recruit young teenagers in to gang activity, mainly centred around the supply of drugs.
So, what has been the Conservative government’s response to the dramatic increase in violent crime? It announced a Serious Violence Strategy, an Early Intervention and Prevention Fund of £40 million, within which there is an Ending Gang Violence and Exploitation Fund of £300,000.
Wonderful!
Let’s put this in context.
Since 2010, central government funding for youth offending teams has more than halved from £145m in 2010/11 to £72m in 2017/18. Similarly, central government cuts to councils has meant that their spending on crime prevention has also more than halved, from £361m to £172m, and there has been a £387m cut in youth services.
Does no-one in this Conservative government and on the Conservative back-benches think there is no correlation between the massive cuts in expenditure in crime prevention and detection activity and big increases in serious, violent crime? What planet are they on?
The government has also introduced an Offensive Weapons Bill that is going through Parliament at the moment. It includes new offences relating to possessing and selling corrosive substances, selling and distributing and possessing knives and other blades and offensive weapons (like knuckledusters) and bans certain firearms and components.
What is astonishing is that the Bill ignores much of the key evidence contained in a leaked internal Home Office report on the drivers of serious violence. This included compelling evidence that much of the increase in violence had been caused by the government’s own cuts in early intervention initiatives targeted at particularly vulnerable young people.
All the evidence suggests that interventions aimed at supporting the surging number of young people in care, homeless or excluded from school; alongside prevention aimed at educating and supporting parents, carers and teachers would reduce violence among this youth cohort.
Further, the government has simply ignored its own evidence that cuts in police resources are hampering police efforts to tackle the surge in violent crime. The increase in unsolved serious crimes means that there has been a diminishment of the deterrent effect. This is having a serious deleterious effect on public safety and on people’s perception of their own safety.
I hope it will be possible for some important changes to be made to the Bill as it goes through Parliament.
Whenever we are considering policy changes to address problems and challenges, or to exploit new opportunities arising from things like new technology, we ought to look around the world to see if others have had similar problems or opportunities, how they have addressed them, and what lessons can be learned. Too often, energy and resources are committed to reinventing the wheel. This comment applies as much to authorities and agencies in South Yorkshire, as much as it does to the UK government.
In this instance, the Home Office has admitted that, in preparing its new Serious Violence Strategy, it had neglected to learn from others tackling the same issues.
Did it have to travel to the far ends of the world to find successful strategies? No. It just needed to consider the policies and the impact of the internationally renowned Violence Reduction Unit in … Scotland.
In 2005, Scotland had been assessed as the most violent country in the developed world.
Between April 2006 and April 2011, 40 children and teenagers were killed in homicides involving a knife in Scotland. Yet, between 2011 and 2016, that figure fell to just eight. The decline was biggest in Glasgow, which once had one of the highest murder rates in western Europe.
Between 2006 and 2011, 15 children and teenagers were killed with knives in Scotland’s largest city; between 2011 and 2017, none were. Last year, when 35 teenagers were killed by knives in Britain, there was not a single teenage death in Scotland from a knife wound.
Just as important, the Scottish statistics show that there was a decline of more than 70% in the incidence of handling weapons.
This didn’t happen by chance. It didn’t happen because Glasgow teenagers were stuffing deep-fried Mars Bars down their throats instead of stuffing lock-knives in their pockets. It happened because, after considerable research, Scotland adopted a public health approach to knife crime, in which the police work with those in the health, education and social work sectors to address the problem. And, the results so far have been dramatic.
So, I want to see government Ministers and Departments and, locally, South Yorkshire Police and local authorities and all other relevant agencies and voluntary organisations to learn from Scotland - and from any other strategies with successful outcomes - as they develop local responses to the tragic stupidity which is killing local youngsters and leaving local communities insecure and feeling unsafe.