Section:GDN 1N PaGe:4 Edition Date:190731 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 30/7/2019 21:04 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
- The Guardian Wednesday 31 July 2019
(^4) News
said spending on early intervention
fell by 40% in real terms between
2010/11 and 2015/16. Funding of Sure
Start centres, which provide access
to early intervention services, halved
over eight years.
Cooper said: “Serious violence
has got worse after a perfect storm of
youth service cuts, police cuts, more
children being excluded from school
and a failure of statutory agencies to
keep them safe. The government has
a responsibility to deal with this crisis
urgently. Far more needs to be done to
intervene early in young people’s lives,
making sure they have safe places to
go to and trusted adults to help them
and protect them from harm. So much
of this support has been stripped
away, leaving children vulnerable to
exploitation by criminal groups.”
The report said schools in areas with
an above-average risk of youth vio-
lence should have dedicated police
offi cers and that schools should work
to reduce the number of exclusions.
Sajid Javid, later on in his 15-month
tenure as home secretary, was coming
round to more innovative approaches
to tackling violent crime, treating it as a
public health issue , but the committee
was sceptical about this shift.
“The rhetoric about a public health
approach is right but too often that’s all
it is – rhetoric,” Cooper said. “There are
no clear targets or milestones, and no
mechanisms to drive progress.”
The serious-violence strategy
was launched by Javid’s predeces-
sor, Amber Rudd, who stepped down
weeks later in the fallout from the
Windrush scandal.
Javid took up the mantle and sat on
a number of meetings of the serious-
violence taskforce. He has announced
funding rounds for various services.
Anne Longfield, the children’s
commissioner for England, called on
Johnson and Patel to show commit-
ment to tackling youth violence with
“more than summits and meetings”.
She said: “We need a large-scale
and long-term plan that includes a
new generation of youth workers,
more investment in early years and
troubled families programmes, better
children’s mental health services, a
strategy to tackle school exclusions
and keeping schools open for longer
to help protect some of the most vul-
nerable children.”
“Too many families and communi-
ties are being wrecked and too many
childhoods broken by the scourge of
gangs and criminal exploitation.
“Until the government treats this
as a top priority, young people will
continue to be caught up in gangs
and serious violence, and children
will continue to die on our streets.”
Sam Royston, the director of policy
and research at the Children’s Society,
said the report “must act as a wake-up
call to the government to do far more
to tackle growing levels of serious
violence and knife crime”.
“We see the devastating impact of
violence on children who are cyni-
cally groomed to commit crimes like
traffi cking drugs in county lines opera-
tions, and who may be coerced to carry
out violence against rival criminal
groups. These children should be rec-
ognised as victims of exploitation, not
end up being criminalised,” he added.
A Home Offi ce spokesperson said:
the committee had failed to “recog-
nise the full range of urgent action the
government is taking to keep our com-
munities safe – including extra police
powers and resources”.
Ministers accused
over ‘emergency’
of youth violence
Continued from page 1
‘Until this is treated
as a priority, children
will continue to die’
Anne Longfi eld
Children’s commissioner
Police left to tackle
impact of damage
to social fabric, says
chief constable
Vikram Dodd
Police and crime correspondent
Austerity-driven cuts which have dis-
advantaged children vulnerable to
gangs must be reversed to repair Brit-
ain’s “social fabric” and cut crime, a
police chief has said.
In a damning indictment of the
eff ects of years of austerity on crime,
Jon Boutcher, the chief constable
of Bedfordshire, called for police
to be freed up to focus on hardcore
criminals and not victims of social
“circumstance”.
The former national police lead for
race said that no amount of extra police
offi cers would make the streets safer
if the heavy impact of the cuts contin-
ued to weigh on offi cers across the UK.
Last week, when Boris Johnson took
offi ce as prime minister, he announced
20,000 new offi cers, in eff ect revers-
ing Conservative cuts to frontline law
enforcement since 2010.
But in an interview to mark his
retirement, Boutche r said: “20,
more police offi cers is essential, but to
allow those police offi cers to do the job
the public want. Don’t distract us by us
having to repair and look after those
that are not adequately supported
because of the lack of investment in
their public services, particularly men-
tal health provision. We need to repair
the social fabric.”
He added that the “conveyor belt”
of criminal justice was not working
and signifi cant numbers of off enders
could be diverted from crime with a
bigger investment in social services,
education and mental health.
Picking up demand from the crum-
bling mental health system was a big
issue for policing, he said, along with
the impact of struggling social services
and the exclusion of children from
schools, who ended up on the streets.
He said: “The fi rst responsibility of
government is to protect its citizens.
That comes about in a number of ways.
Policing is a core part of that, but other
public services have to be properly
funded to ensure we all feel safe.”
Boutcher’s force covers Luton,
where he claimed swingeing cuts had
left children vulnerable to exploita-
tion. “There has been a 50% cut in the
funding of youth services in Luton as
the council could not aff ord it,” he said.
“You take those services away, kids
go in the parks and hang around the
streets and are vulnerable to gangs and
others who will exploit them, as a con-
sequence of failing to properly fund
those services.“
He said that in addition to 20,
offi cers lost since 2010 “we also lost
20,000 police staff who do key jobs.
We’ve also seen an increase in demand;
999 calls have gone through the roof ”.
Boutcher ’s comments echo private
sentiments among some police chiefs
that a signifi cant proportion of crime is
linked to social conditions. “There are
so many areas when we could improve
the life chances of people, rather than
arresting them and putting them into
a conveyor belt of the criminal justice
system which often leads to them
becoming harder and harsher crimi-
nals ,” he said.
“I’m not a liberal-hearted, lefty
softy. But let us police those who want
to damage our society, and choose to
damage our society. But provide the
support for those who are caught by
circumstance and give them pathways
away from crime. That needs more
money. Let us concentrate on those
who choose to be criminals.”
He also expressed regrets about low
ethnic minority recruitment. “They do
perceive we are racist,” he said. “They
do not see policing as an organisation
they can join. People’s perceptions are
often their reality. It’s not good enough
saying we are not racist; we have to
demonstrate it.”
The government is failing to get to
grips with serious youth violence ,
MPs have warned. More than 100
people have been killed with knives
this year, many of them children.
Here we look at some of the
teenagers who lost their lives.
Jaden Moodie, 8 January
Moodie, 14, was stabbed in east
London , the youngest person to
die in a street attack in the capital in
more than a year. He was rammed
by a car while riding a moped in
Leyton, then stabbed by three men
in a frenzied attack. An 18-year-old
boy was charged with his murder.
Jodie Chesney, 1 March
The 17-year-old was stabbed in a
park in east London. The police said
she had been playing music and
socialising with friends.
Yousef Ghaleb Makki, 2 March
Makki, 17, was found slumped
against a tree in Hale Barns,
Greater Manchester. He died in
hospital. He had won a scholarship
at the £12,500-a-year Manchester
Grammar School. A 17-year-old boy
was acquitted this month of his
murder and manslaughter.
Jordan Moazami , 24 April
Moazami, 18, was stabbed after a
fi ght erupted near a golf club. Jordan
played for Continental Star FC in
Birmingham. Two teenagers have
been charged over the death.
Tashaun Aird , 1 May
Aird, 15, an aspiring musician, was
killed after a “fracas” with a group of
youths in east London. Three boys
have been charged over his killing.
Yusuf Mohamed, 26 June
Mohamed, 18, ran into a
convenience store in west London
to hide following a fi ght but was
followed when he left and stabbed
to death. Two 17-year-old boys were
charged with his murder.
Kye Manning, 11 July
Manning, 19, died of a single stab
wound to the heart. Witnesses
told local reporters that there were
scenes of a “bloodbath” in Croydon
town centre. Jamie Grierson
The victims
Teenagers stabbed to death this year
Jordan Moazami, 18,
Birmingham
Tashaun Aird, 15,
Hackney, London
Yusuf Mohamed, 18,
Shepherd’s Bush, London
Jodie Chesney, 17,
Romford, London
Jaden Moodie, 14,
Leyton, London
Yousef Ghaleb Makki, 17,
Hale Barns, Manchester
Kye Manning, 19,
Croydon, London
РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS
ЛИ
ЗП
ОД
ГО
ТО
ВИ
ЛАААand a failure of statutory agencies to and a failure of statutory agencies to
children being excluded from school children being excluded from school ГГГ
and a failure of statutory agencies to
Г
and a failure of statutory agencies to
children being excluded from school children being excluded from school children being excluded from school children being excluded from school РУУП
youth service cuts, police cuts, more
П
youth service cuts, police cuts, more
children being excluded from school children being excluded from school П
youth service cuts, police cuts, more youth service cuts, police cuts, more youth service cuts, police cuts, more youth service cuts, police cuts, more ППАА
"What's
News" News"
and a failure of statutory agencies to
News"
and a failure of statutory agencies to
keep them safe. The government has
News"
keep them safe. The government has
VK.COM/WSNWSVK.COM/WSNWS
keep them safe. The government has
VK.COM/WSNWS
keep them safe. The government has
a responsibility to deal with this crisis
VK.COM/WSNWS
a responsibility to deal with this crisis