Professor Larry Ray comments on how the police and government can take a better long-term stance to tackle the rising crime rate in London.
‘The number of knife crimes recorded so far by the Metropolitan Police for 2017/18 (14,769) is the highest, following yearly increases, since the low of 9691 in 2014/15.
‘There have been 117 homicides to date in 2018 in the Metropolitan Area, as opposed to 116 in 2017, excluding 14 terrorist-related deaths. Across England and Wales police recorded crime shows and an annual increase in recorded knife crime of 12 per cent and of 19 percent in homicide.
‘However, this needs to be set against figures from the Crime Survey England and Wales indicating that overall rates of violent crime have been stable for several years and do not show an increase in 2018. The figures and trends need to be analysed carefully. But violent crime is highly geographically concentrated and overall trends are not much of a guide to conditions in areas of high deprivation with multiple social problems and an absence of opportunities. What is clear is that we are looking at sharp localised increases in violent attacks, especially among young people, in areas of very high deprivation.
‘A map of increases in knife crime in 2018 follows closely boroughs with highest levels of deprivation. London is one of the most unequal cities in the developed world and there is a great deal of evidence that inequality, especially racialized inequalities, is associated with high violent crime.
‘To be effective, increased resources, policing, violence reduction units, community cohesion initiatives – the kinds of thing Sadiq Khan is proposing – need to be combined with serious and far-reaching measures to reduce inequalities and deprivation in London and other cities in the UK.’
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