Britain’s rising knife crime epidemic has provoked a bitter blame game between the police and Home Office.
The Independent reports that police have “reacted with fury” after being told to step up their response to violent crime by the home secretary, a day after MPs warned that cuts could have “dire consequences for public safety”.
Sajid Javid has urged Scotland Yard to make full use of police powers, including stop and search, as its officers seek to end the bloodshed.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Earlier this week London Mayor Sadiq Khan told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that solving the problem could take up to a decade.
Javid’s remarks come after five people were stabbed to death in the space of a week in London, bringing the total number killed by knife crime in the capital this year to 74.
Home Office figures released last month revealed that forces in England and Wales conducted 282,248 stops and searches in the 12 months to March, the lowest number since current data collection started 17 years ago.
The tactics have previously attracted controversy amid criticism they unfairly focused on black and minority ethnic individuals, prompting the then-home secretary Theresa May to introduce reforms back in 2014 to ensure the practice was used in a more targeted way.
The London Evening Standard reports that “since his appointment, Mr Javid has backed a boost in the use of the powers as officers and ministers attempt to bear down on spiralling levels of serious violence”.
“If stop and search means that lives can be saved from the communities most affected, then of course it's a very good thing,” he told the annual Police Superintendents' Conference in September.
However, the effectiveness of stop and search has been widely disputed.
The government's Serious Violence Strategy, published in April, acknowledges that knife crime, gun crime and homicide have all risen as stop and search has fallen, “but it dismisses any link, pointing out that knife crime fell between 2010-11 and 2013-14 - a period that also coincided with a fall in stop and search”, says the BBC.
A separate study published last year from the College of Policing published a study examining Metropolitan Police stop and search data found that higher rates of the practice, under any power, only led to “very slightly lower than expected rates of crime in the following week or month”.
-
How clean-air efforts may have exacerbated global warmingUnder the Radar Air pollution artificially cooled the Earth, ‘masking’ extent of temperature increase
-
September 14 editorial cartoonsCartoons Sunday’s political cartoons include RFK Jr on the hook, the destruction of discourse, and more
-
Air strikes in the Caribbean: Trump’s murky narco-warTalking Point Drug cartels ‘don’t follow Marquess of Queensberry Rules’, but US military air strikes on speedboats rely on strained interpretation of ‘invasion’
-
Dash: the UK's 'flawed' domestic violence toolThe Explainer Risk-assessment checklist relied on by police and social services deemed unfit for frontline use
-
The ethics behind facial recognition vans and policingThe Explainer The government is rolling out more live facial recognition technology across England
-
What to do if your phone is stolenThe Explainer An average of 180 phones is stolen every day in London, the 'phone-snatching capital of Europe'
-
How should we define extremism and terrorism?Today's Big Question The government has faced calls to expand the definition of terrorism in the wake of Southport murders
-
Matthew Trickett: man charged with spying for Hong Kong found deadSpeed Read Immigration Enforcement officer was accused of gathering information on dissidents in the UK
-
What is going on in women’s prisons?feature Inmate numbers and self-harm cases are rising despite government pledge to improve conditions
-
What we know about the Copenhagen mall shootingSpeed Read Lone gunman had mental health issues and not thought to have terror motive, police say
-
Texas school shooting: parents turn anger on policeSpeed Read Officers had to be urged to enter building where gunman killed 21 people
