Waking up on new year’s day to discover that 4 young men have lost their lives in unrelated knife crimes. The headline reaction is to increase ‘Stop and Search’ – everyone can see it happening, data can be collected and a few convictions will come about as a result. Are former gang members, victims of knife crime and bereaved parents part of the process? They need to be.
It seems to me that these young men already feel on the edges of society – will ‘Stop and Search’ increase their alienation? But in these desperate times is this a sacrifice we have to make? My heart breaks when I see the devastating effects of knife crime on families, it isn’t just a narrow group of gang members: children are dying on their way home from school; playing in the park or sitting on a wall. I don’t have the answers but I do feel angered and confused by this senseless violence.
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Stop & Search is a sad necessity but won’t be the solution, however if young men know there is a chance they could get searched they may think twice about carrying a weapon. Maybe they won’t but something has to change. The government needs to backtrack and put back the resources into the police force, the police themselves need to be regulated to keep a check on stop and search being general and not just black youths. But most of all Major resource needs to be put into services for young people, councils given adequate budgets to provide youth clubs, free sports facilities etc. More community workers and more investment in the youth service, this will not eridicate gang culture but would surely reduce it, how many young people get sucked in because there is nothing else to do, nowhere to go and nobody to talk too, they have to have an alternative. I fail to understand why that the cuts made in the period of austerity haven’t been reversed, even under the shadow of Brexit the economy is growing and performing better than expected.
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