Serious Youth Violence report: the causes and solutions

Hundreds of children in the UK are losing their lives as a result of the government’s failure to tackle the “social emergency” of serious youth violence, MPs are warning.

The Home Affairs Committee’s newly published Serious Youth Violence report says that the current national Serious Violence Strategy is “completely inadequate”, and calls on new Prime Minister Boris Johnson to take “personal responsibility” for dealing with growing knife and gun violence among young people.

According to the cross-party group of MPs, homicides have increased by more than a third in the last five years across England and Wales. Knife offences are up by more than 70%, while the number of under-18s admitted to hospital with knife injuries rose by a third between 2013-14 and 2017-18, Sky News reports.

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More than 100 people, many of them children, have been killed by knives in Britain already this year, adds The Guardian.

The causes

The committee’s analysis found that the crisis is being fuelled by a “perfect storm” of factors including cuts in youth services; heavily reduced police budgets; a growing number of children being excluded from school and taken into care; and a failure of statutory agencies to keep young people safe.

“Children have been let down by safeguarding systems that are far too narrowly focused on risks inside the family home, as well as an ongoing failure of agencies to work effectively together to build a package of support around young people,” the MPs say.

“We have major concerns about the apparent growth of a 24/7 ‘dial a dealer’ drug culture, and the turf wars associated with this profitable market,” continues the report, which says that the Home Office’s drug strategy is “failing miserably”.

Police say that the estimated 1,500 so-called county line gangs operating in the UK are a key factor in the knife crime epidemic, reports HuffPost.

“(Government) just haven’t risen to the scale of the problem,” said Labour MP Yvette Cooper, who chairs the committee. “There are no clear targets or milestones, and no mechanisms to drive progress. To publish a weak strategy and convene a few roundtable discussions just isn’t enough when faced with youth violence on this scale.”

Caroline Shearer, founder of the charity Only Cowards Carry Weapons Awareness, told Sky News: “[Knife crime] is a disease now, it’s an absolute disease. It’s being buried by Brexit continuously. The government are so consumed by Brexit, [while] our kids on our streets are dying.”

Shearer, whose son was fatally stabbed at a party, argues that young people involved in violence and knife crime “need to be put in a specialised unit, where their mental health can be assessed, their home life assessed by social workers and get to the deep route causes”.

The solutions

The MPs are calling for “urgent action”, with more leadership and direction from the government and the PM, and an accountable authority in every local area.

Major nationwide investment in local youth services is needed, with a “youth service guarantee” with ringfenced funding for statutory services, they argue.

The guarantee would include “the introduction of a fully funded, statutory minimum of provision for youth outreach workers and community youth projects in all areas, co-designed with local young people”, according to a statement from the committee.

The new report also calls for more investment in neighbourhood policing - including a commitment to get a dedicated police officer into “all schools in areas with an above-average risk of serious youth violence”. These officers would focus on activities such as “high visibility patrols” and delivering workshops to the students”, according to the BBC.

“More needs to be done to increase the confidence of young people in the police - particularly those from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds,” the committee says.

Welcoming the report recommendations, the Children’s Commissioner for England, Anne Longfield, said that youth violence was a “top priority” that must be treated with a “large-scale and long-term plan”, and urged Johnson to make good on his promise to recruit more police officers to “drive the response”.

Committee chair Cooper added: “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.”

Responding to the report, a Home Office spokesperson said: “The committee’s assessment fails to recognise the full range of urgent action the government is taking to keep our communities safe – including extra police powers and resources. The prime minister and home secretary last week announced the recruitment of 20,000 more officers and a new national policing board, which will meet for the first time today, to drive the response to critical issues including serious violence.

“Police funding is increasing by more than £1bn this year, including council tax and £100m for forces worst affected by violent crime.”