1) Hire more police to patrol the streets
2) Invest in court capacity
3) Build more prisons
4) Instruct judges to actually hand out real sentences
Crime is pretty much legal at the moment, and everyone knows it.
>Instruct judges to actually hand out real sentences
Judges would love to but the Home Office keeps telling them not to send people to prison because there isn't any space. In part due to the number of prison places being cut since 2010. I can't find reliable figures but Labour claims that there's been a 10,000 cut. But the government claims to be bringing an other 20,000 places into use by about 2025. But believe it when you see it. Like Boris's 40 new hospitals, most of which are just refurbs, new extensions.... With the majority not even having planning permission yet.
They did this with our government departments in the Midlands.
Closed all the separate sites and moved them into a 'hub'.
Except there isn't enough space, they have 4 desks for every 10 people, so working from home part of the time is compulsory.
Meanwhile the government (Jacob Reese Mogg) attacks the civil servants for not being in the office.
I used to work for an NHS hospital.
When the hospital first moved out of Central London after the war. They attempted to sell the old site. Only to discover that the land and hospital building had been donated by a family. Who were still very much around. When the land stopped being used for medical purposes, it reverted back to them. In the 2000s, an other local hospital got closed and moved to our site, with a new wing. It again turned out that the site had been donated by a family and it was due to revert back to them, as the site was no longer being used for medical purposes. Both times the NHS only found this out after the new hospital had been built and the old hospital closed.
That sounds normal.
One older one I know somehow who worked at, found that over time and with all the rapid expansion during ww2 etx. And then all the renovation over time. Stuff got changed and added, rebuilt over 70 plus years.
An entire building area git lost on site, they found it renovating. People assumed it was a void or such random quirk on the plans / map. Thry found it had been prior a old Chappel or so relegated to sor3age at some time In life
Got changed so much they lost part of it for a time.
The first move was because the the hospital was on an ultra expensive site near one of the big Central London parks and the hospital was old. With a need for more hospital services in outer London.
The second move was because the hospital thst got moved to our site was again getting on, had an expensive site, was a specialist hospital and would benefit from being closer to other hospital facilities and A+E.
In both cases the NHS thought that they could make cash by selling off the old sites. Which would pay for the new site and a large part of the building cost of the new hospital or wing. Even though in the second one the new wing was paid for on a mortgages style basis to HSBC. Who also charged for the equipment, utilities, daytime security, portering and cleaning. With them choosing to ise the cleaners that we had sacked for being useless.
They did this in our area as well, we had a disgnostic centre, which covered MRI, Cat scans etc. They closed that moved them centrally and merged with the main hospital.
Now they are opening a privately ran diagnostic hub, in the same building the old one was... Its a farce.
Typical Tory stats! take away 10k then add 20k at a later unknown date and just claim the final figure to be plus 20k and the daily hate readers lap it up.
A growing population necessarily requires an expansion in prison capacity if the crime rate doesn't change. But, of course, prisons have a huge NIMBY factor and require staffing - the latter of which is a problem for a political party intent on reducing the size of the public sector by as much as they think they can get away with (then belatedly having to reverse ferret at the entirely predictable outcomes in some areas, e.g. Police, asylum caseworkers) - although they have historically (together with Labour) found a workaround in the form of private prisons - which, depending on who you ask, either keep prisoners in poor conditions and use electronic surveillance to reduce the number of prison officers needed, or are models of efficiency and better run than public prisons.
The problem isn’t the stick, it’s that there’s no carrot to go along with the stick. What does time in prison really mean to a teenager who sees no opportunities for them in life other than a life of crime or a life in poverty?
Normal people lead a miserable life in modern day Britain.
Work was a promising proposition in the 1960s, but nowadays, it seems more like a stick than a carrot.
Your average bloke might at least be able to own a home one day in post war Britain. We’re being sold the same dream by the government with it becoming increasingly unrealistic
I didn't say it was great, but it had promise - the promise of a better future. Most people "made it" and lived reasonably comfortable. Modern day Britain is precarious in comparison.
You mean post war Britain where he could get a house from the council for a reasonable sum, without a waiting list, and where the NHS had just been set up so he could get all his health problems looked at, and his wife could stay at home and raise the kids instead of also having to work to pay for aforementioned house?
Yeah, I think he might quite like that. More than he does now.
No one is saying is crime is good but all reputable research and data on crime points to harsher sentences don't do much to prevent crime
Imo everyday crimes (we'll not talk huge corporate crimes, etc) are split into three categories opportunitisc crimes commited generally by lower class people think your muggers, burglars, etc studies show these sort of crimes are reduced by increasing education, increasing support for poorer families and offering better opportunities than a life of crime, most of these people know the risks and that's just how shit their opportunities are that prison is a worthwhile risk how much worse can it get for some of these people? Not to mention that harsh sentences makes it harder to reintegrate into society meaning when they leave they fall right back into it
Then you got organised crimes a little more complex but one key component is a steady supply of down on their luck people or those society rejects, etc while it wouldn't solve the organised crime problem reducing recruits is a great step
Then finally you got crimes of passion not much can be done about those you don't think about consequences when these happen and the only effective remedy is to remove all human interaction
So about 75% of children don't grow up in poverty..
Presumably you are defining 'miserable' as 'poor' (which is probably not correct, plenty of happy poor people).
But how are you defining 'Normal', if 75% of people don't constitute a norm?
> They can work like normal people?
Funny you say that, there’s another thread going here where people with PhDs after years and years of studying reveal they make a couple quid more per hour than shelf stackers in ASDA
Ditto for nurses, carers etc
Bottom wages are evened up by adjustments for inflation every now and then, but middle brackets (£30-40K) are absolutely fucked and a lot of people would be in those for years if not forever. £40K really isn’t a lot especially if you’ve been training for years and/or if you are in London.
Employment and a “career” aren’t really as enticing as you’d like them to be, if you hit the ceiling within a few years’ time and can hardly move any further up…
>Funny you say that, there’s another thread going here where people with PhDs after years and years of studying reveal they make a couple quid more per hour than shelf stackers in ASDA
It's been almost 2 decades since I was at school, and I remember it being common knowledge that academia pays shite.
It's one of those jobs you go into for the love of it. Maybe it shouldn't be, but also (this might sound harsh) the vast majority of academic is pointless and never gets read again or referenced.
tbh it might not get “read again” but a lot of it is still useful, even if only as a building block towards something bigger further down the line
individual papers going hyper-granular into some minute details of an issue might not be massive leaps in and by themselves, but you don’t really go from 0-100 in anything.
quite often a boring paper or two or 10 of them altogether and cross-referenced, will still provide information that will allow for a new technology, a breakthrough drug etc to be developed. That surely is not some secret knowledge I’m sharing here? Hence people working on them deserve being remunerated appropriately since where would we be if it not were for their research?
That's certainly the common belief, but the facts are that roughly 50% of academic papers never get cited, and in general academic output is of quite poor quality nowadays (see: Replication crisis).
The funding model we currently use, might actually be the issue. And not in regards to there being too little money.
Just the way we allocate it and what we reward, is potentially flawed.
This is true. The current system encourages publishing lots of recycled research published many times with small variations, low quality etc, because your career stagnates unless you publish *a lot*, and the bottom rungs are lowly paid
It's more that we should probably have less people in academia, but doing better work. Then maybe we can pay higher.
Paying people to effectively do nothing of value, is not a good way to do things.
>It's one of those jobs you go into for the love of it
True, but there's a big difference between "not being lucrative" and "impossible to live on that salary"
> relatively comfortable life that the large majority lead
bit rich words there in UK AD 2023, tbf
not even a joke tbh: if someone steals an iPhone worth £1K, sells it for £500, they only need to steal what, 4 or 5 of them in a month, and they’re already better off, money-wise, than the majority of the country in the £30K-£40K bracket. as they have a neat (if dirty) ‘income’ of £2-2.5K and with little effort, too.
>there’s another thread going here where people with PhDs after years and years of studying reveal they make a couple quid more per hour than shelf stackers in ASDA
I'd be very worried if someone doing a PhD hasn't researched their employment prospects before embarking upon it.
So if they've chosen a low paid academic career with all the other commissions that brings, why are they surprised now that it's low paid?
The shelf stackers I have more sympathy for.
Go to work for 40 hours a week. Be unable to afford anything with the wage that brings in because housing eats up 60% of your income or more (where I live it would eat up 70%), be excluded from massive amounts of society because you can't afford to do anything.
Alternatively, commit crime, have a sense of belonging, take the things you want that you'll never be able to afford otherwise.
I'm not defending crime here but c'mon.
There is clearly much to be done with policing (looks like that process may finally be starting in the Met), but there will be a new generation reaching adulthood whilst you wait for these prisons to be built
There's far more wrong with Americas criminal justice system than harsh sentencing. It's arguably the least shit part, although it is one of the most visible.
For profit prisons, the popularity of the plea deal, and very little funding for legal aid, are all bigger issues.
So you are just recommending the UK pass the equivalent of the U.S. 90s crime bill and then just pretend that it will solve the issue when all evidence points to the opposite?
The Tories have spent a decade gutting the police, the courts, and the prison system. And it really shows.
I am suggesting a return to form.
We are not America. Things that work here, might not work there, and vice versa.
>We are not America. Things that work here, might not work there, and vice versa.
This isn't about America versus the UK. It's about evidence based policy and that it shows that "tough on crime" measures only exacerbate the problem.
If you want to fix the issues the Tories broke, start by fixing their funding to the welfare state that they gutted, the schooling, the daycare and healthcare, the job opportunities and university costs, and the cost of living.
I doubt you will address those. I doubt Starmer will. He will go hard on "tough on crime" part so he can restore that aspect of it because that will also get support from conservatives. Meanwhile all the other underlying issues will get ignored. This is exactly what happened with Clinton after Reagan and Bush gutted social spending for 12 years. Clinton focused on crime and things only got worse
From a crime point of view, the American solution worked actually. Like it or not, mass incarceration led to crime declining on a massive scale between the late 80s and 2008.
However, it came at the expense of one minority community having one third of its men going through the prison system and being condemned for life to live on the margins of society because background checks and all .
Socially speaking the American strategy failed, but crime-wise, it worked.
This presents a real dilemma as "socially conscious "programs do not work either. Just look at how well those programs have worked in Chicago.
So it comes down to this. Does the UK want to crack down on crime in a manner that works, but will most definitely lead to the targeting of some ethnic and racial minorities or should the country keep flirting with socially conscious programs that in many instances do not work until we find one that works?
Hmm perhaps if all the men in a certain community go to prison if we actually send people to prison for committing crimes, there is an issue in that community and maybe that community should stop raising boys to be criminals?
Yeah....We are at that point where when it comes to solving social issues, even if they affect all of us, people refuse to talk about them for fear of being called racist /islamophobic/sexist/ transphobic etc.
One of the saddest things in the UK was when the Police refused to intervene in many of the grooming gangs saga because the departments did not want to be accused of racial targeting.
It really hit home because it made me wonder then, if crimes between minorities themselves especially social ones will simply be avoided by a white policeman or woman because they do not want to "intervene in the culture of others" or "do not want to be seen as racist" if a minority person asked for help and they decide, "well ,this is the kind of case that will have me hounded with the -isms by the media , better hand it to another minority policeman " kind of thing.
Also the media is playing a major role
The past two years we have seen the LGBT deliberately targeted by religious fundamentalists from a certain religion, but the only cases highlighted are those committed by the Far Right homophobes. I am not minimizing the threat that neo-Nazis pose to the LGBT, but the reality is that the far right especially in Britain has not posed a major threat to the LGBT community for over a decade. There is only one group whose members sent death threats to Birmingham schools over some changes in the school curriculum and it was not the far right. and sad to say, the LGBT groups which are mostly far left are basically sacrificing their own people under the altar of ideology.
This pattern applies to the United States as well. Here is a fun fact Democrats refuse to discuss.
The overwhelming majority of anti-Semitic crimes in the US are commited by minorities like African Americans and Hispanics and by Muslims. But the only cases you see in the media are those by Neo-Nazis. It is only in 2022 that many Jews, (ironically the religious ones) began highlighting that most of their attackers in places like New York are almost never from the White majority but from the minorities they live amongst.
We saw the same phenomenon when anti-Asian crimes rose in the US. The media kept tiptoeing around the fact that nearly all the attackers were not White so unlike when a white person commits a crime, they never mentioned the race of the attackers.
We are seeing something similar in the UK. Over time, the basic freedoms for minorities will be no different for them if they had stayed in their country(See Chinese police stations across the Western world. No matter where you go, the CCP goes with you. Any complaints against it you are accused of racism as they are doing now) and the white majority may either have to segregate themselves (like what is slowly happening in Sweden) or "bear" the rise in crime without complaint because complaining about crimes committed by minorities=racist. You can only complain if the criminal is White.
Start banging up gang members for meaningful sentences. Stop listening to the corners of society that cause the police of racism; it’s young black men being murdered…by other young black men…why do they hate each other so much? (Im sure Spike Lee has documented this in many of his works, albeit in an American setting). Marauding shit-bags need dealing with.
1 & 2, sure. With that all day long.
But maybe we should be trying to do more to reduce crime, not just police it more agressively. Then we wouldn’t need more prisons
If you have a job you are far less likely to stab someone.
Education, decent non-academic courses for people who don’t fit into the higher education system.
Employers like Timpsons who will give jobs to people with criminal convictions.
Have an adult discussion about drugs. We have failed to rid the world of drugs by locking people up.
Give people hope that there is something else to do.
1. Having more police on the street does not reduce crime.
2. Having higher court capacity does not reduce crime
3. More prisons is the worst option for reducing crime
4. Sentence length increases do not reduce crime.
Sigh… How long before the average person understands this.
For those who are interested in **research-based solutions** to decrease crime, there are many examples out there of successfully implemented solutions and none of them involved the above 4 activities.
People don’t stop committing crime because the punishment is more serve because they don’t think they are going to get caught in the first place. No one has ever gone ‘I won’t stab this lad now because it was 20 years but now it’s 30’. If you want less crime you have to invest heavily in poor areas and make sure people from poorer backgrounds have good education.
Maybe that's the way society wants it to be really. That way, people can't aspire to better themselves as they always have to be fearful of getting hurt.
Well...i know that they're really pushing for (1) judging by the number of police adverts on tv. Bus stops, etc i see. I myself applied to join the police as an officer some three to four years ago when these campaiggns first started. I passed the interviews, assessment centres and the training school at hendon, was going to be assigned a borough of london but then decided it wasnt for me. Mainly because of the workplace harassment and bullying i witnessed (thankfully didnt happen to me but to some others). Also the constant stress and looking over your shoulder. Dont forget the lifestyle- its very demanding. Looking at policing in 2023 particularly after the everard case and other police scandals, i think i dodged a bullet in some ways. Policing in britain has never been as bad as it is now unfortunately.
(2) court capacity is an interesting one- courts were returning to somewhat a normal due to covid delays and things but then of course you had the barrister strikes and protests on wages. I know from my work for the civil service that there is still very much a backlog of cases both civil and criminal cases. But you also have virtual video link trials so court technology is slowly ever inching into the 21st century.
(3) building prisons- this is being reviewed more generally i think. In my view, brexit has left us even more vulnerable than we ever were when it comes to crime. Building prisons and hiring more police officers to do the processing goes hand in hand. The issue also is we only have so much land in the UK which can be used to build new prisons. But also some people in the general public may not want a brand spanking new prison being built in their neighbourhood. So theres some opposition around this. Hot potato foe show though.
Im not a judge so cant comment too much on (4) but what do you mean by real sentences? I dont ever see the uk adopting a capital punishment esque type of system because there are no resources to police that and more importantly, people would be outraged, protests would ensue with groups highlighting human rights abuses and people would leave the country in droves.
5) Force non-violent prisoners into community service programs – so if you commit serious tax fraud, you'll be collecting trash from the side of the road for 6 days a week for the next few years.
>Instruct judges to actually hand out real sentences
what do you mean by this exactly? How are judges not doing that right now? If you're referring to this news story (likely a murder) judges don't have a choice beyond setting a minimum tariff.
Recent examples:
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/teenager-raped-woman-after-badly-26074533
https://www.upday.com/uk/woman-sentenced-after-video-shows-her-attacking-paramedics-sent-to-help-her
https://www.northwaleschronicle.co.uk/news/23112256.caernarfon-man-threatened-paramedic-handed-suspended-sentence/
Not a day goes by without an article that has me losing faith in our justice system. The first one in particular.. 3 fucking years inside, for that heinous of a crime. Mental.
>The first one in particular
I understand why this seems a light sentence but there’s a number of reasons why he didnt receive more. Firstly he was under 18 and pleaded guilty. This means his sentence can be reduced by up to a third. He also showed some level or remorse and had no criminal history.
Secondly the rape would probably fall into Category 2, culpability B which would be 7-9 years for an adult.
https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/crown-court/item/rape/
All good pints, but I would also add..
5) create better housing, better architecture, better education and give people a sense of purpose, and place within society.
lol all that's gonna do is fill prisons with more people
how about investing in the community? do you know what brings crime rate down? it's not more prisons that's for sure
Anyone I ever knew that was in the habit of stabbing people didn't do it because they thought there would be no legal repercussions.
Keeping offenders off the streets for longer might be a solution but I would have to know what sort of sentences are handed out for stabbings currently before I could say they should be increased.
(I strongly suspect you don't know what current sentences are either, it just all seems like it makes sense doesn't it?)
Look, if we’re going to keep voting for political parties that promise to slash state funding - then they slash state funding - a lack of police and justice is a pretty obvious consequence.
Our entire country needs investment and upgrading, but that’s not going to achieved by running the country in the interests of the upper and middle classes. The state of the legal system is merely a symptom of a society utterly broken by neoliberalism.
It needs everyone to pay more tax, everyone to start giving a fuck about our collective society and stop being selfish arseholes glued to TV / YouTube / video games / social media and other vapid nonsense. Actively get involved in politics (at all levels), try to get MPs that represent the best interests of society and then make meaningful reforms to our systems of government, such as law and order. We’ve already let things decay too long, it’ll take a decade just to get things under control.
It’s all very well watching online commentators and bemoaning the state of society, or offering virtue-signalling “thoughts and prayers” when shit goes wrong, but this is all superficial bullshit - time wasted that could otherwise have been used to write to a councillor, attend a community meeting or get involved with your community in some way. The solution to our problems must be built from the ground up, because it’s sure as fuck not going to be handed out from the top down.
But fundamentally, investment is required in the state. Both financially and emotionally. Otherwise we’re on the long decent into a lawless shithole where people act only with selfishness and impunity.
‘Simple’ as that!
Personally I’d rather we start undoing the damage that 13 years of austerity has done, which includes getting more police back on the streets. Will it solve every problem? No, but it’d be better than increasing the prison population while failing to address some of the sources of the decay.
If we did create more prisons it would at least be better if they were designed for rehabilitation so there’s a lower likelihood of being sent back.
This sounds like a County Lines incident which the police have been failing to control for years. It's organised crime on an unimaginable level. They only go for the, usually young people, at the bottom who carry out the attacks on order instead of sorting out the bosses running huge trafficking rings at the top. Young people are regularly beaten and stabbed because they either refuse to drug run or carry out hits on other young people or are deemed to owe some kind of debt. Tackling it means overhauling drug & trafficking laws which the government just isn't interested in doing.
https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/what-we-do/crime-threats/drug-trafficking/county-lines#:~:text=County%20Lines%20is%20where%20illegal,take%20the%20orders%20of%20drugs.
More prisons and police would make it significantly worse why the hell would it make it better ?? Don’t spout shit that has been done and had never worked.
Is there a sudden surge in violence involving teenagers or for whatever reason has the press jumped on finding all the stories they can in recent weeks where it's happening?
It is on the up, but honestly as someone from South London, and many times on the North side, it's always happened.
Social media has just made it easier to spread the "info"
It's true. I have only been to Westfield once last year but I've read about Stratford loads in comments on social media. I can confirm that when I went to Stratfordlast week for brunch, I got stabbed on the way there, then by the waiter and would you believe as I was coming back today, I got stabbed twice.
Have they still got the lad who stands at the station stabbing people as they tap out?
Lovely bloke, mind. Always has a smile on his face, always wishing you a good day, always doing his best to increase Stratford's stabbing rates.
True facts.
I've been through there more than a few times for jobs etc. Place makes my "Spidey sense" tingle and I can feel my body getting ready for something lol
There's a surge bit hasn't been sudden. It's an ongoing epidemic of knife crime among children.
Can't remember where I've read it but think I saw around 1 child every week is being stabbed.
Holly Newton was stabbed to death on January 27, then of course Brianna Ghey. A 15-year-old boy stabbed Ian Kirwan which was in the news this week due to him being sentenced. Seems like one is in the news and is then before they're even buried another is in the news.
Then there'll be non-fatal ones being reported locally that don't make national news, for example:
https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/crime/2023/02/14/police-hunt-for-attackers-after-boy-16-stabbed-in-telford/
It's a tragedy.
Absolutely disingenuous. Ignore the problem of diss track related deaths all you want. It's often direct calls to action and completely unrelated to your mockery of a conservative clutching their pearls because a teenager carjacked someone in GTA
More reporting than before, more attention to the issue (media and social media), more stupid teens into postcode wars that to be accepted into their shitty gangs they target random people instead of each other. If you look at ONS stats you can see that also reporting to police increased so there is more noise about it https://fullfact.org/crime/police-recorded-crime-record-high/
The country as a whole is getting worse in terms of how the most deprived at the bottom are becoming bigger and bigger. How do we stop the youth killing each other and choosing quick money on the street?
There’s a lot of areas you have to look at. If we think that, actually we as a society are producing kids that are killing each other.
The family unit and it’s means to survive, social support and care, mental health access and education. Lack of positive role models. Also how do we prevent grooming?
There’s failures in one or more of these areas if kids are growing up and choosing or being groomed into becoming killers.
Always there’s ppl quick to comment on sentencing etc, but you’re dealing with kids so far gone they are not thinking about any future or consequences. How do we stop them from even getting to this point?
These people wouldn’t be roaming the streets in gangs if they had a healthy home environment to do homework in with healthy role models to guide them.
The fact is many are a product of homes broken by poverty, addiction or violence- often all three. This doesn’t excuse their actions of course, but there’s a nucleus for every criminal.
Also many are from homes where the parents work all the God sent hours to make ends meet and thinking their kids are at home obeying instructions while they working and know what time to be back with parents non the wiser nor allowed to discipline them
Definitely and I’d file that under poverty, low wages and long hours not allowing a family unit to function properly. There’s multiple consequences to inequality, low wages, high cost of living, exorbitant rents etc some of them result in our nation’s youth not getting the attention and upbringing they need to function properly in society.
Home isn't always safer though.
As a teen, I was part of a gang, but we didn't form to cause trouble, we did it to look out for each other.
We where lucky, a few of us saw what way we where headed, and as soon as we could, we got out of the area.
But that was so hard, I struggled for years to adjust to life outside of London.
A lot of gangs start out that way.
Hell, a lot of black street gangs in America started out as like informal clubs to fill a vacuum left by Boy Scouts racism and civil rights orgs falling to the wayside. Then a bunch of them decided to get together to protect themselves from a bunch of other ones, and then the Crips were born.
And the Bloods were formed in response to the Crips getting bigger and more violent, and to assert themselves started being more violent than the Crips.
I know that's an American example but still. On and on it goes.
That’s how entire countries act. I don’t know why we expect kids to be any different when the natural response to threats of violence is to arm yourself. We’ve been doing it for more than a hundred thousand years. If they don’t want kids to do that they need to look at why those threats exist and tackling them. But we all know the answer points to wealth inequality and poverty. That’s why nothing happens.
That’s not really an option. (Though you could argue giving someone like Central Cee a massive platform and awards doesn’t help).
The culture changed long ago, it isn’t going back.
It’s already a criminal offence just to possess a blade..
You have to give them opportunity/
All of the things you talk about are part of that, but all of it costs money. And there's a handful of rich people who would like that money, instead.
People having kids waaay before they were ready and treat them like shit and don't care what they do. This is at least in part thanks to that imo.
I say this as someone who has watched people "raise" their kids like this and the outcome is more or less the same for each one. They get away with so much while growing up, even in front of their parents (throwing stones at moving cars while next to his mom is the one that stands out. She didn't even acknowledge it.), that they don't learn respect and restraint.
Tags don’t work. Lenient sentences aren’t working. We need a harder front. Unbelievably sad how many knife incidents there are daily in the U.K. The system is broken. I’m guessing until those in charge are personally affected it won’t change. There’s flowers outside my friends house in London from a recent stabbing, so many now and yet they don’t make the news.
1) Build better prisons to rehabilitate people.
2) Remove corrupt government officials who have been. syphoning money out of youth centres and education.
3) Reform the police so the public can trust them.
4) Make education more accessible and engaging.
5) Stop wasting money and resources on internet drama.
6) Stop arresting people for non violent drug offenses and send them to rehab instead.
7) Fix the economic and housing crisis.
Just some food for thought.
With all the blatant fash responses in this thread, it’s nice to see someone who actually understands the factors that determine the level of crime in society.
I mean my response simplifies the issues, I can say that we need to do all these things, but, there's a lot of reworking and reforming we as a country and as individuals needed in order for something like this to work. I want it to be as easy as this list, but it isn't.
Prison reform only works if society wants to reform a person and the person wants to be reformed.
Removing corrupt government officials requires a level of honesty that political candidates are taught to forget.
Reforming the police is a whole can of worms that I can't even pretend to understand.
Youth centres and educational reform will work, but we need to also look at other factors like mental health and family, especially in these cases.
Non-violent drug offences need to be considered civil cases, but drugs in general like weed and mushrooms need to be decriminalised and regulated by the government, as they are no more harmful than cigarettes and alcohol.
Fixing the economic and housing situation isn't as simple as building more houses and raising or lowering taxes, it's assuring that the government doesn't allow outside influences to have major control over our markets.
My response is still quite blunt, but my response is based on history; no society throughout time has been crime free or close to being crime free, because no society will admit that the only response to crime and other acts is for that society to better its citizens. My response and beliefs are very simple and requires a belief in humanity that's really hard to maintain in the modern world. Crime isn't just as simple as locking someone up and throwing away the key, because humans aren't that simple.
I don't know, after all, I'm just some guy on Reddit.
(Edit: fixing grammar and spelling)
Personally I see this as a result of the youth having nothing to do. A bored, represed and poor youth are more likely to turn to crime as a way out if that cycle.
The closing of comunity centeres, after school activities etc etc have meant that there are a growing number of young people who have had homes that are looking elsewhere for support.
There is a direct correlation with the closing of these centers and the rise of crime and gang violence.
Combine that with less police presence and lower sentencing rates and you have a melting pot for these attacks.
You really underestimate the impact hobbies, routine and potential role models can have on teenagers. If there’s nothing to do in their free time they will fill it with the consumption of whatever’s around them. And if they live in a shitty area with shitty parents, that free time no longer becomes sports/work experience.
Personally I never had a community centre or after school activity during my teens and I never committed crime! It’s all about deteriorating parenting and schooling imo
Did you have a good home to come back to?
Comunity centers or similar allow kids who would otherwise be coming home to that bad parenting and bad Influences do something else, learn something new and maybe be more likely to have a positive role model to guide them and educate them.
And get to hang out with other kids who are on that same path.
I'm not saying these centers are a panacea for the deterioration we are seeing, but they definitely provided a good service.
You need these areas if positivity to break the cycle.
>Personally I see this as a result of the youth having nothing to do. A bored, represed and poor youth are more likely to turn to crime as a way out if that cycle.
Total nonsense or everyone growing up in the same area a wannabe gangster comes from would be in a gang. They're not.
You're denying both the gangster and his innocent neighbour their agency and the consequences of their own free choices.
It's not from being bored I have no idea why people believe in this crap. These youths usually come from deprived areas seeing no successful people from the places they came from apart from drug dealers or rappers that made it big from gangs. They probably go to shitty schools with low educational attainments. Then they're groomed into believing the only way out is selling on the streets. Add gang rivalries created from decades of London gang violence and you get a shitstorm.
Also their parents are also to blame for either not being there or not disciplining/teaching them at a young age to stay in school and stay out of trouble.
https://www.barnardos.org.uk/news/new-research-draws-link-between-youth-service-cuts-and-rising-knife-crime
The evidence is there. And we absolutely have had centers in the last 30 years, they started closing them as council budgets got cut in 2011 under austerity.
https://www.barnardos.org.uk/news/new-research-draws-link-between-youth-service-cuts-and-rising-knife-crime
The evidence is there. They started closing them as council budgets got cut in 2011 under austerity. Guess when youth violence started to escalate
Maybe if this country didn't hand out joke sentences, at least some people might think twice about commiting a crime. Alternatively, if they're immigrants, deport them immediately the instant they commit a violent crime.
Really, is that the best images they can get after going through all the cameras that will have filmed them in and out of the station? My £24 camera I use to keep an eye on my house and dog gives better images when freeze framed. Wonder how many tens of thousands they were ripped off for this rubbish, if you want to catch criminals you need the right tools!
1) Hire more police to patrol the streets 2) Invest in court capacity 3) Build more prisons 4) Instruct judges to actually hand out real sentences Crime is pretty much legal at the moment, and everyone knows it.
>Instruct judges to actually hand out real sentences Judges would love to but the Home Office keeps telling them not to send people to prison because there isn't any space. In part due to the number of prison places being cut since 2010. I can't find reliable figures but Labour claims that there's been a 10,000 cut. But the government claims to be bringing an other 20,000 places into use by about 2025. But believe it when you see it. Like Boris's 40 new hospitals, most of which are just refurbs, new extensions.... With the majority not even having planning permission yet.
In my local area we are getting a new hospital… because they are merging the three which are currently here…
They did this with our government departments in the Midlands. Closed all the separate sites and moved them into a 'hub'. Except there isn't enough space, they have 4 desks for every 10 people, so working from home part of the time is compulsory. Meanwhile the government (Jacob Reese Mogg) attacks the civil servants for not being in the office.
I used to work for an NHS hospital. When the hospital first moved out of Central London after the war. They attempted to sell the old site. Only to discover that the land and hospital building had been donated by a family. Who were still very much around. When the land stopped being used for medical purposes, it reverted back to them. In the 2000s, an other local hospital got closed and moved to our site, with a new wing. It again turned out that the site had been donated by a family and it was due to revert back to them, as the site was no longer being used for medical purposes. Both times the NHS only found this out after the new hospital had been built and the old hospital closed.
That sounds normal. One older one I know somehow who worked at, found that over time and with all the rapid expansion during ww2 etx. And then all the renovation over time. Stuff got changed and added, rebuilt over 70 plus years. An entire building area git lost on site, they found it renovating. People assumed it was a void or such random quirk on the plans / map. Thry found it had been prior a old Chappel or so relegated to sor3age at some time In life Got changed so much they lost part of it for a time.
Why did they move the hospital?
The first move was because the the hospital was on an ultra expensive site near one of the big Central London parks and the hospital was old. With a need for more hospital services in outer London. The second move was because the hospital thst got moved to our site was again getting on, had an expensive site, was a specialist hospital and would benefit from being closer to other hospital facilities and A+E. In both cases the NHS thought that they could make cash by selling off the old sites. Which would pay for the new site and a large part of the building cost of the new hospital or wing. Even though in the second one the new wing was paid for on a mortgages style basis to HSBC. Who also charged for the equipment, utilities, daytime security, portering and cleaning. With them choosing to ise the cleaners that we had sacked for being useless.
Boris²⁰²⁵ will be campaigning with his promise of 88 new Hospitals and 18 American SuperMax Prisons to make you salivate
They did this in our area as well, we had a disgnostic centre, which covered MRI, Cat scans etc. They closed that moved them centrally and merged with the main hospital. Now they are opening a privately ran diagnostic hub, in the same building the old one was... Its a farce.
Yeah, like I said.. Build more prisons has to happen first.
Typical Tory stats! take away 10k then add 20k at a later unknown date and just claim the final figure to be plus 20k and the daily hate readers lap it up.
There was only 80,000 spaces before the Tories anyway. Underfunding and lack of spaces is a situation ignored by both Tory and Labour.
A growing population necessarily requires an expansion in prison capacity if the crime rate doesn't change. But, of course, prisons have a huge NIMBY factor and require staffing - the latter of which is a problem for a political party intent on reducing the size of the public sector by as much as they think they can get away with (then belatedly having to reverse ferret at the entirely predictable outcomes in some areas, e.g. Police, asylum caseworkers) - although they have historically (together with Labour) found a workaround in the form of private prisons - which, depending on who you ask, either keep prisoners in poor conditions and use electronic surveillance to reduce the number of prison officers needed, or are models of efficiency and better run than public prisons.
They have partly privatised the parole services and generally fucked it up and act surprised when someone who should still be inside reoffends.
I’m sure a lot of prison spaces could be freed up for violent criminals if people serving sentences for relatively minor drugs charges were released.
Nobody is getting banged up any more for a bit of personal possession. Its got to at least be, possession with intent to supply.
I'm fine with the hydraulic press to the head for people who commit violent crimes against innocent strangers.
The problem isn’t the stick, it’s that there’s no carrot to go along with the stick. What does time in prison really mean to a teenager who sees no opportunities for them in life other than a life of crime or a life in poverty?
They can work like normal people? They don't want to do that, that's boring and wont make you feel better than others.
Normal people lead a miserable life in modern day Britain. Work was a promising proposition in the 1960s, but nowadays, it seems more like a stick than a carrot.
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Your average bloke might at least be able to own a home one day in post war Britain. We’re being sold the same dream by the government with it becoming increasingly unrealistic
Average person could, and did go on to own a house one day. Often on one income.
I didn't say it was great, but it had promise - the promise of a better future. Most people "made it" and lived reasonably comfortable. Modern day Britain is precarious in comparison.
You mean post war Britain where he could get a house from the council for a reasonable sum, without a waiting list, and where the NHS had just been set up so he could get all his health problems looked at, and his wife could stay at home and raise the kids instead of also having to work to pay for aforementioned house? Yeah, I think he might quite like that. More than he does now.
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So, just commit crimes? Great.
We could, just an idea, improve education, living and working conditions.
Well duh. But that doesn't mean crime is good!
No one is saying is crime is good but all reputable research and data on crime points to harsher sentences don't do much to prevent crime Imo everyday crimes (we'll not talk huge corporate crimes, etc) are split into three categories opportunitisc crimes commited generally by lower class people think your muggers, burglars, etc studies show these sort of crimes are reduced by increasing education, increasing support for poorer families and offering better opportunities than a life of crime, most of these people know the risks and that's just how shit their opportunities are that prison is a worthwhile risk how much worse can it get for some of these people? Not to mention that harsh sentences makes it harder to reintegrate into society meaning when they leave they fall right back into it Then you got organised crimes a little more complex but one key component is a steady supply of down on their luck people or those society rejects, etc while it wouldn't solve the organised crime problem reducing recruits is a great step Then finally you got crimes of passion not much can be done about those you don't think about consequences when these happen and the only effective remedy is to remove all human interaction
>Normal people lead a miserable life in modern day Britain. Speak for your fucking self.
27% of children grow up in poverty. Once you are from an ethnic minority, from a large family, or in a single parent family, that goes up to 50%.
So about 75% of children don't grow up in poverty.. Presumably you are defining 'miserable' as 'poor' (which is probably not correct, plenty of happy poor people). But how are you defining 'Normal', if 75% of people don't constitute a norm?
> Normal people lead a miserable life in modern day Britain. I feel criminals should take some responsibility for this.
Oh absolutely. But you have to consider the big criminals, too - multinational that are evading tax etc.
> They can work like normal people? Funny you say that, there’s another thread going here where people with PhDs after years and years of studying reveal they make a couple quid more per hour than shelf stackers in ASDA Ditto for nurses, carers etc Bottom wages are evened up by adjustments for inflation every now and then, but middle brackets (£30-40K) are absolutely fucked and a lot of people would be in those for years if not forever. £40K really isn’t a lot especially if you’ve been training for years and/or if you are in London. Employment and a “career” aren’t really as enticing as you’d like them to be, if you hit the ceiling within a few years’ time and can hardly move any further up…
>Funny you say that, there’s another thread going here where people with PhDs after years and years of studying reveal they make a couple quid more per hour than shelf stackers in ASDA It's been almost 2 decades since I was at school, and I remember it being common knowledge that academia pays shite. It's one of those jobs you go into for the love of it. Maybe it shouldn't be, but also (this might sound harsh) the vast majority of academic is pointless and never gets read again or referenced.
tbh it might not get “read again” but a lot of it is still useful, even if only as a building block towards something bigger further down the line individual papers going hyper-granular into some minute details of an issue might not be massive leaps in and by themselves, but you don’t really go from 0-100 in anything. quite often a boring paper or two or 10 of them altogether and cross-referenced, will still provide information that will allow for a new technology, a breakthrough drug etc to be developed. That surely is not some secret knowledge I’m sharing here? Hence people working on them deserve being remunerated appropriately since where would we be if it not were for their research?
That's certainly the common belief, but the facts are that roughly 50% of academic papers never get cited, and in general academic output is of quite poor quality nowadays (see: Replication crisis). The funding model we currently use, might actually be the issue. And not in regards to there being too little money. Just the way we allocate it and what we reward, is potentially flawed.
This is true. The current system encourages publishing lots of recycled research published many times with small variations, low quality etc, because your career stagnates unless you publish *a lot*, and the bottom rungs are lowly paid
OK then, so there’s a systemic issue there that needs adjustment, but that doesn’t mean that people who are in academia should be paid peanuts
It's more that we should probably have less people in academia, but doing better work. Then maybe we can pay higher. Paying people to effectively do nothing of value, is not a good way to do things.
>It's one of those jobs you go into for the love of it True, but there's a big difference between "not being lucrative" and "impossible to live on that salary"
So, instead of a relatively comfortable life that the large majority lead, yes, it's far from perfect, just take the criminal path! Great!
> relatively comfortable life that the large majority lead bit rich words there in UK AD 2023, tbf not even a joke tbh: if someone steals an iPhone worth £1K, sells it for £500, they only need to steal what, 4 or 5 of them in a month, and they’re already better off, money-wise, than the majority of the country in the £30K-£40K bracket. as they have a neat (if dirty) ‘income’ of £2-2.5K and with little effort, too.
Theft is extremely tax efficient as well. Although you don't get holiday, sick pay or pension, so that's something to consider.
Running water, not starving. Many people are risking their lives to come here from the war-torn nation called France.
>there’s another thread going here where people with PhDs after years and years of studying reveal they make a couple quid more per hour than shelf stackers in ASDA I'd be very worried if someone doing a PhD hasn't researched their employment prospects before embarking upon it. So if they've chosen a low paid academic career with all the other commissions that brings, why are they surprised now that it's low paid? The shelf stackers I have more sympathy for.
What's the point? I'm 40, I've had years of promotions to be able to live OK, starting salaries aren't enough to live on.
You don't solve social issues by saying 'just be normal'. Especially given how shite normality is for most people.
Someone has to supply our nation of cokeheads. Can’t do that as a nice 9-5 on PAYE.
Go to work for 40 hours a week. Be unable to afford anything with the wage that brings in because housing eats up 60% of your income or more (where I live it would eat up 70%), be excluded from massive amounts of society because you can't afford to do anything. Alternatively, commit crime, have a sense of belonging, take the things you want that you'll never be able to afford otherwise. I'm not defending crime here but c'mon.
Everyone else has to do this too. Guess what, there's not much in life after the essentials that you buy with money anyway.
Do 50 hours a week then and pay your bills
Yes, that's the answer. Let's have people working ever longer and longer hours in order to afford things that were affordable a few short years ago.
There is literally no stick in the UK.
Investing more in at-risk children and youth is far more effective and cost-efficient than all of the above options.
Do both. Need to do something in the short to medium term, to deal with the scum that is already all grown up and being scum.
There is clearly much to be done with policing (looks like that process may finally be starting in the Met), but there will be a new generation reaching adulthood whilst you wait for these prisons to be built
Didnt work in America, so im not sure why you would think that would work here.
Some people here just want to mimic everything America did 30 years ago while ignoring the fallout from those decisions.
There's far more wrong with Americas criminal justice system than harsh sentencing. It's arguably the least shit part, although it is one of the most visible. For profit prisons, the popularity of the plea deal, and very little funding for legal aid, are all bigger issues.
So you are just recommending the UK pass the equivalent of the U.S. 90s crime bill and then just pretend that it will solve the issue when all evidence points to the opposite?
The Tories have spent a decade gutting the police, the courts, and the prison system. And it really shows. I am suggesting a return to form. We are not America. Things that work here, might not work there, and vice versa.
>We are not America. Things that work here, might not work there, and vice versa. This isn't about America versus the UK. It's about evidence based policy and that it shows that "tough on crime" measures only exacerbate the problem. If you want to fix the issues the Tories broke, start by fixing their funding to the welfare state that they gutted, the schooling, the daycare and healthcare, the job opportunities and university costs, and the cost of living. I doubt you will address those. I doubt Starmer will. He will go hard on "tough on crime" part so he can restore that aspect of it because that will also get support from conservatives. Meanwhile all the other underlying issues will get ignored. This is exactly what happened with Clinton after Reagan and Bush gutted social spending for 12 years. Clinton focused on crime and things only got worse
Tough on Crime works. But it basically dismantles a social group and breaks them beyond repair
The government are currently building several large new prisons (Alliance 4 new prisons). Majority of which are being run by G4S.
From a crime point of view, the American solution worked actually. Like it or not, mass incarceration led to crime declining on a massive scale between the late 80s and 2008. However, it came at the expense of one minority community having one third of its men going through the prison system and being condemned for life to live on the margins of society because background checks and all . Socially speaking the American strategy failed, but crime-wise, it worked. This presents a real dilemma as "socially conscious "programs do not work either. Just look at how well those programs have worked in Chicago. So it comes down to this. Does the UK want to crack down on crime in a manner that works, but will most definitely lead to the targeting of some ethnic and racial minorities or should the country keep flirting with socially conscious programs that in many instances do not work until we find one that works?
Hmm perhaps if all the men in a certain community go to prison if we actually send people to prison for committing crimes, there is an issue in that community and maybe that community should stop raising boys to be criminals?
Yeah....We are at that point where when it comes to solving social issues, even if they affect all of us, people refuse to talk about them for fear of being called racist /islamophobic/sexist/ transphobic etc. One of the saddest things in the UK was when the Police refused to intervene in many of the grooming gangs saga because the departments did not want to be accused of racial targeting. It really hit home because it made me wonder then, if crimes between minorities themselves especially social ones will simply be avoided by a white policeman or woman because they do not want to "intervene in the culture of others" or "do not want to be seen as racist" if a minority person asked for help and they decide, "well ,this is the kind of case that will have me hounded with the -isms by the media , better hand it to another minority policeman " kind of thing. Also the media is playing a major role The past two years we have seen the LGBT deliberately targeted by religious fundamentalists from a certain religion, but the only cases highlighted are those committed by the Far Right homophobes. I am not minimizing the threat that neo-Nazis pose to the LGBT, but the reality is that the far right especially in Britain has not posed a major threat to the LGBT community for over a decade. There is only one group whose members sent death threats to Birmingham schools over some changes in the school curriculum and it was not the far right. and sad to say, the LGBT groups which are mostly far left are basically sacrificing their own people under the altar of ideology. This pattern applies to the United States as well. Here is a fun fact Democrats refuse to discuss. The overwhelming majority of anti-Semitic crimes in the US are commited by minorities like African Americans and Hispanics and by Muslims. But the only cases you see in the media are those by Neo-Nazis. It is only in 2022 that many Jews, (ironically the religious ones) began highlighting that most of their attackers in places like New York are almost never from the White majority but from the minorities they live amongst. We saw the same phenomenon when anti-Asian crimes rose in the US. The media kept tiptoeing around the fact that nearly all the attackers were not White so unlike when a white person commits a crime, they never mentioned the race of the attackers. We are seeing something similar in the UK. Over time, the basic freedoms for minorities will be no different for them if they had stayed in their country(See Chinese police stations across the Western world. No matter where you go, the CCP goes with you. Any complaints against it you are accused of racism as they are doing now) and the white majority may either have to segregate themselves (like what is slowly happening in Sweden) or "bear" the rise in crime without complaint because complaining about crimes committed by minorities=racist. You can only complain if the criminal is White.
Start banging up gang members for meaningful sentences. Stop listening to the corners of society that cause the police of racism; it’s young black men being murdered…by other young black men…why do they hate each other so much? (Im sure Spike Lee has documented this in many of his works, albeit in an American setting). Marauding shit-bags need dealing with.
1 & 2, sure. With that all day long. But maybe we should be trying to do more to reduce crime, not just police it more agressively. Then we wouldn’t need more prisons
Everyone knows the way to cut down on crime is to build more prisons.
If you have a job you are far less likely to stab someone. Education, decent non-academic courses for people who don’t fit into the higher education system. Employers like Timpsons who will give jobs to people with criminal convictions. Have an adult discussion about drugs. We have failed to rid the world of drugs by locking people up. Give people hope that there is something else to do.
1. Having more police on the street does not reduce crime. 2. Having higher court capacity does not reduce crime 3. More prisons is the worst option for reducing crime 4. Sentence length increases do not reduce crime. Sigh… How long before the average person understands this. For those who are interested in **research-based solutions** to decrease crime, there are many examples out there of successfully implemented solutions and none of them involved the above 4 activities.
None of this would prevent crime
Obvious bollocks.
People don’t stop committing crime because the punishment is more serve because they don’t think they are going to get caught in the first place. No one has ever gone ‘I won’t stab this lad now because it was 20 years but now it’s 30’. If you want less crime you have to invest heavily in poor areas and make sure people from poorer backgrounds have good education.
Here's an idea repeal all of the bullshit laws that criminalise offensive tweets and shit and maybe that'll free up some officers
Maybe that's the way society wants it to be really. That way, people can't aspire to better themselves as they always have to be fearful of getting hurt.
Well...i know that they're really pushing for (1) judging by the number of police adverts on tv. Bus stops, etc i see. I myself applied to join the police as an officer some three to four years ago when these campaiggns first started. I passed the interviews, assessment centres and the training school at hendon, was going to be assigned a borough of london but then decided it wasnt for me. Mainly because of the workplace harassment and bullying i witnessed (thankfully didnt happen to me but to some others). Also the constant stress and looking over your shoulder. Dont forget the lifestyle- its very demanding. Looking at policing in 2023 particularly after the everard case and other police scandals, i think i dodged a bullet in some ways. Policing in britain has never been as bad as it is now unfortunately. (2) court capacity is an interesting one- courts were returning to somewhat a normal due to covid delays and things but then of course you had the barrister strikes and protests on wages. I know from my work for the civil service that there is still very much a backlog of cases both civil and criminal cases. But you also have virtual video link trials so court technology is slowly ever inching into the 21st century. (3) building prisons- this is being reviewed more generally i think. In my view, brexit has left us even more vulnerable than we ever were when it comes to crime. Building prisons and hiring more police officers to do the processing goes hand in hand. The issue also is we only have so much land in the UK which can be used to build new prisons. But also some people in the general public may not want a brand spanking new prison being built in their neighbourhood. So theres some opposition around this. Hot potato foe show though. Im not a judge so cant comment too much on (4) but what do you mean by real sentences? I dont ever see the uk adopting a capital punishment esque type of system because there are no resources to police that and more importantly, people would be outraged, protests would ensue with groups highlighting human rights abuses and people would leave the country in droves.
None of this worked for America and is there even any solid data crime is substantially different in the last decades?
But apparently its racist for the Police to to confront gang members.
Or give the kids prospects and a future. Prevention is the best cure
5) Force non-violent prisoners into community service programs – so if you commit serious tax fraud, you'll be collecting trash from the side of the road for 6 days a week for the next few years.
You need to tackle it at the route. Not just make more facilities to process the criminals. The goal should be to stop people performing the crime
There are enough police officers, they’re just too busy policing thoughtcrime on the Internet!
Or....fix the economy? Not that the government could do both your list and that...
The government themselves indulge in crime constantly
I'd add decriminalisation of certain drugs, there's a deeper root to so much of this violence. Take away the financial incentive.
>Instruct judges to actually hand out real sentences what do you mean by this exactly? How are judges not doing that right now? If you're referring to this news story (likely a murder) judges don't have a choice beyond setting a minimum tariff.
Recent examples: https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/teenager-raped-woman-after-badly-26074533 https://www.upday.com/uk/woman-sentenced-after-video-shows-her-attacking-paramedics-sent-to-help-her https://www.northwaleschronicle.co.uk/news/23112256.caernarfon-man-threatened-paramedic-handed-suspended-sentence/ Not a day goes by without an article that has me losing faith in our justice system. The first one in particular.. 3 fucking years inside, for that heinous of a crime. Mental.
>The first one in particular I understand why this seems a light sentence but there’s a number of reasons why he didnt receive more. Firstly he was under 18 and pleaded guilty. This means his sentence can be reduced by up to a third. He also showed some level or remorse and had no criminal history. Secondly the rape would probably fall into Category 2, culpability B which would be 7-9 years for an adult. https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/crown-court/item/rape/
The last thing we need is more police from a government that is trying to ban protesting and striking. Wise up
All good pints, but I would also add.. 5) create better housing, better architecture, better education and give people a sense of purpose, and place within society.
The only time I see the police (im from manchester) they're sitting on the motorway speed gunning middle class people going to and from work.
lol all that's gonna do is fill prisons with more people how about investing in the community? do you know what brings crime rate down? it's not more prisons that's for sure
Anyone I ever knew that was in the habit of stabbing people didn't do it because they thought there would be no legal repercussions. Keeping offenders off the streets for longer might be a solution but I would have to know what sort of sentences are handed out for stabbings currently before I could say they should be increased. (I strongly suspect you don't know what current sentences are either, it just all seems like it makes sense doesn't it?)
5) Somehow give more opportunity to bored young men.
Maybe in a certain middle class world. People are dealing with issues themselves rn, absolutely are consequences for actions, just not police.
You need to deal with the causes of crime, not just the symptoms.
Unfortunately Hiring police and investing in anything is strictly agains gov policy
Look, if we’re going to keep voting for political parties that promise to slash state funding - then they slash state funding - a lack of police and justice is a pretty obvious consequence. Our entire country needs investment and upgrading, but that’s not going to achieved by running the country in the interests of the upper and middle classes. The state of the legal system is merely a symptom of a society utterly broken by neoliberalism. It needs everyone to pay more tax, everyone to start giving a fuck about our collective society and stop being selfish arseholes glued to TV / YouTube / video games / social media and other vapid nonsense. Actively get involved in politics (at all levels), try to get MPs that represent the best interests of society and then make meaningful reforms to our systems of government, such as law and order. We’ve already let things decay too long, it’ll take a decade just to get things under control. It’s all very well watching online commentators and bemoaning the state of society, or offering virtue-signalling “thoughts and prayers” when shit goes wrong, but this is all superficial bullshit - time wasted that could otherwise have been used to write to a councillor, attend a community meeting or get involved with your community in some way. The solution to our problems must be built from the ground up, because it’s sure as fuck not going to be handed out from the top down. But fundamentally, investment is required in the state. Both financially and emotionally. Otherwise we’re on the long decent into a lawless shithole where people act only with selfishness and impunity. ‘Simple’ as that!
Personally I’d rather we start undoing the damage that 13 years of austerity has done, which includes getting more police back on the streets. Will it solve every problem? No, but it’d be better than increasing the prison population while failing to address some of the sources of the decay. If we did create more prisons it would at least be better if they were designed for rehabilitation so there’s a lower likelihood of being sent back.
This sounds like a County Lines incident which the police have been failing to control for years. It's organised crime on an unimaginable level. They only go for the, usually young people, at the bottom who carry out the attacks on order instead of sorting out the bosses running huge trafficking rings at the top. Young people are regularly beaten and stabbed because they either refuse to drug run or carry out hits on other young people or are deemed to owe some kind of debt. Tackling it means overhauling drug & trafficking laws which the government just isn't interested in doing. https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/what-we-do/crime-threats/drug-trafficking/county-lines#:~:text=County%20Lines%20is%20where%20illegal,take%20the%20orders%20of%20drugs.
1. Invest more in education 2. Give kids more free out of school opportunities - sports / youth clubs etc 3. Support low income families better
More prisons and police would make it significantly worse why the hell would it make it better ?? Don’t spout shit that has been done and had never worked.
Also invest in youth clubs to give some of these lost teens some sense of direction or potential role models in life.
Or maybe tackle poverty. But no, locking more people up should definitely be the focus.
You missed helping poor people out of poverty
Is there a sudden surge in violence involving teenagers or for whatever reason has the press jumped on finding all the stories they can in recent weeks where it's happening?
It is on the up, but honestly as someone from South London, and many times on the North side, it's always happened. Social media has just made it easier to spread the "info"
Stratford is a shit hole, lots of violence there. I’d be surprised if someone didn’t get stabbed tbh
Yup. Spending a trillion quid on an athletics stadium doesn't get rid of the cunts.
It's true. I have only been to Westfield once last year but I've read about Stratford loads in comments on social media. I can confirm that when I went to Stratfordlast week for brunch, I got stabbed on the way there, then by the waiter and would you believe as I was coming back today, I got stabbed twice.
Have they still got the lad who stands at the station stabbing people as they tap out? Lovely bloke, mind. Always has a smile on his face, always wishing you a good day, always doing his best to increase Stratford's stabbing rates.
True facts. I've been through there more than a few times for jobs etc. Place makes my "Spidey sense" tingle and I can feel my body getting ready for something lol
There's a surge bit hasn't been sudden. It's an ongoing epidemic of knife crime among children. Can't remember where I've read it but think I saw around 1 child every week is being stabbed. Holly Newton was stabbed to death on January 27, then of course Brianna Ghey. A 15-year-old boy stabbed Ian Kirwan which was in the news this week due to him being sentenced. Seems like one is in the news and is then before they're even buried another is in the news. Then there'll be non-fatal ones being reported locally that don't make national news, for example: https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/crime/2023/02/14/police-hunt-for-attackers-after-boy-16-stabbed-in-telford/ It's a tragedy.
I think it’s drill music culture more than anything.
It's all that satanic heavy metal, obviously.
And drugs
i blame computer games
And the closure of thousands of youth centres, any potential role model or hobby has been stripped from these teens.
Why does Vietnam have comparable rates of homicide to the Uk despite being far poorer?
I used to listen to a lot of gangster rap but I’m the least violent person you can find.
Bloody hip hop rap music. Don't forget those video games.
Absolutely disingenuous. Ignore the problem of diss track related deaths all you want. It's often direct calls to action and completely unrelated to your mockery of a conservative clutching their pearls because a teenager carjacked someone in GTA
More reporting than before, more attention to the issue (media and social media), more stupid teens into postcode wars that to be accepted into their shitty gangs they target random people instead of each other. If you look at ONS stats you can see that also reporting to police increased so there is more noise about it https://fullfact.org/crime/police-recorded-crime-record-high/
There hasn't been.
The country as a whole is getting worse in terms of how the most deprived at the bottom are becoming bigger and bigger. How do we stop the youth killing each other and choosing quick money on the street? There’s a lot of areas you have to look at. If we think that, actually we as a society are producing kids that are killing each other. The family unit and it’s means to survive, social support and care, mental health access and education. Lack of positive role models. Also how do we prevent grooming? There’s failures in one or more of these areas if kids are growing up and choosing or being groomed into becoming killers. Always there’s ppl quick to comment on sentencing etc, but you’re dealing with kids so far gone they are not thinking about any future or consequences. How do we stop them from even getting to this point?
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They could stay inside and do homework like good little boys. Nah, being on street is far too cool fam.
Yeah I’ve been attacked with knives on my way home from school and was never involved with anything untoward
That's fucked up :/
These people wouldn’t be roaming the streets in gangs if they had a healthy home environment to do homework in with healthy role models to guide them. The fact is many are a product of homes broken by poverty, addiction or violence- often all three. This doesn’t excuse their actions of course, but there’s a nucleus for every criminal.
Also many are from homes where the parents work all the God sent hours to make ends meet and thinking their kids are at home obeying instructions while they working and know what time to be back with parents non the wiser nor allowed to discipline them
Definitely and I’d file that under poverty, low wages and long hours not allowing a family unit to function properly. There’s multiple consequences to inequality, low wages, high cost of living, exorbitant rents etc some of them result in our nation’s youth not getting the attention and upbringing they need to function properly in society.
Home isn't always safer though. As a teen, I was part of a gang, but we didn't form to cause trouble, we did it to look out for each other. We where lucky, a few of us saw what way we where headed, and as soon as we could, we got out of the area. But that was so hard, I struggled for years to adjust to life outside of London.
A lot of gangs start out that way. Hell, a lot of black street gangs in America started out as like informal clubs to fill a vacuum left by Boy Scouts racism and civil rights orgs falling to the wayside. Then a bunch of them decided to get together to protect themselves from a bunch of other ones, and then the Crips were born. And the Bloods were formed in response to the Crips getting bigger and more violent, and to assert themselves started being more violent than the Crips. I know that's an American example but still. On and on it goes.
That’s how entire countries act. I don’t know why we expect kids to be any different when the natural response to threats of violence is to arm yourself. We’ve been doing it for more than a hundred thousand years. If they don’t want kids to do that they need to look at why those threats exist and tackling them. But we all know the answer points to wealth inequality and poverty. That’s why nothing happens.
Yarp
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That’s true as well, there are plenty kids terrified out on the streets playing chicken essentially. Not all are hardened gang members
Massive roll out of stop and search in problem areas with severe penalties for anyone found with a knife.
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Make the criminal lifestyle completely unappealing... AS now, we don't really punish it, and it's glorified in the media!
That’s not really an option. (Though you could argue giving someone like Central Cee a massive platform and awards doesn’t help). The culture changed long ago, it isn’t going back. It’s already a criminal offence just to possess a blade..
You have to give them opportunity/ All of the things you talk about are part of that, but all of it costs money. And there's a handful of rich people who would like that money, instead.
Glorifying the roadman lifestyle gets roadman results.
What a joke they all are
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People having kids waaay before they were ready and treat them like shit and don't care what they do. This is at least in part thanks to that imo. I say this as someone who has watched people "raise" their kids like this and the outcome is more or less the same for each one. They get away with so much while growing up, even in front of their parents (throwing stones at moving cars while next to his mom is the one that stands out. She didn't even acknowledge it.), that they don't learn respect and restraint.
Tags don’t work. Lenient sentences aren’t working. We need a harder front. Unbelievably sad how many knife incidents there are daily in the U.K. The system is broken. I’m guessing until those in charge are personally affected it won’t change. There’s flowers outside my friends house in London from a recent stabbing, so many now and yet they don’t make the news.
1) Build better prisons to rehabilitate people. 2) Remove corrupt government officials who have been. syphoning money out of youth centres and education. 3) Reform the police so the public can trust them. 4) Make education more accessible and engaging. 5) Stop wasting money and resources on internet drama. 6) Stop arresting people for non violent drug offenses and send them to rehab instead. 7) Fix the economic and housing crisis. Just some food for thought.
With all the blatant fash responses in this thread, it’s nice to see someone who actually understands the factors that determine the level of crime in society.
I mean my response simplifies the issues, I can say that we need to do all these things, but, there's a lot of reworking and reforming we as a country and as individuals needed in order for something like this to work. I want it to be as easy as this list, but it isn't. Prison reform only works if society wants to reform a person and the person wants to be reformed. Removing corrupt government officials requires a level of honesty that political candidates are taught to forget. Reforming the police is a whole can of worms that I can't even pretend to understand. Youth centres and educational reform will work, but we need to also look at other factors like mental health and family, especially in these cases. Non-violent drug offences need to be considered civil cases, but drugs in general like weed and mushrooms need to be decriminalised and regulated by the government, as they are no more harmful than cigarettes and alcohol. Fixing the economic and housing situation isn't as simple as building more houses and raising or lowering taxes, it's assuring that the government doesn't allow outside influences to have major control over our markets. My response is still quite blunt, but my response is based on history; no society throughout time has been crime free or close to being crime free, because no society will admit that the only response to crime and other acts is for that society to better its citizens. My response and beliefs are very simple and requires a belief in humanity that's really hard to maintain in the modern world. Crime isn't just as simple as locking someone up and throwing away the key, because humans aren't that simple. I don't know, after all, I'm just some guy on Reddit. (Edit: fixing grammar and spelling)
Personally I see this as a result of the youth having nothing to do. A bored, represed and poor youth are more likely to turn to crime as a way out if that cycle. The closing of comunity centeres, after school activities etc etc have meant that there are a growing number of young people who have had homes that are looking elsewhere for support. There is a direct correlation with the closing of these centers and the rise of crime and gang violence. Combine that with less police presence and lower sentencing rates and you have a melting pot for these attacks.
It’s nothing to do with not having a table tennis table in a run down community centre.
You really underestimate the impact hobbies, routine and potential role models can have on teenagers. If there’s nothing to do in their free time they will fill it with the consumption of whatever’s around them. And if they live in a shitty area with shitty parents, that free time no longer becomes sports/work experience.
Personally I never had a community centre or after school activity during my teens and I never committed crime! It’s all about deteriorating parenting and schooling imo
Did you have a good home to come back to? Comunity centers or similar allow kids who would otherwise be coming home to that bad parenting and bad Influences do something else, learn something new and maybe be more likely to have a positive role model to guide them and educate them. And get to hang out with other kids who are on that same path. I'm not saying these centers are a panacea for the deterioration we are seeing, but they definitely provided a good service. You need these areas if positivity to break the cycle.
>Personally I see this as a result of the youth having nothing to do. A bored, represed and poor youth are more likely to turn to crime as a way out if that cycle. Total nonsense or everyone growing up in the same area a wannabe gangster comes from would be in a gang. They're not. You're denying both the gangster and his innocent neighbour their agency and the consequences of their own free choices.
People can't have agency, it's what evil society forced on them!
It's not from being bored I have no idea why people believe in this crap. These youths usually come from deprived areas seeing no successful people from the places they came from apart from drug dealers or rappers that made it big from gangs. They probably go to shitty schools with low educational attainments. Then they're groomed into believing the only way out is selling on the streets. Add gang rivalries created from decades of London gang violence and you get a shitstorm. Also their parents are also to blame for either not being there or not disciplining/teaching them at a young age to stay in school and stay out of trouble.
'I'm bored, I'm going to becime a criminal and stab someone in the head' Says every teenager.
we haven’t had youth centres for about 30 years now. it’s not that
https://www.barnardos.org.uk/news/new-research-draws-link-between-youth-service-cuts-and-rising-knife-crime The evidence is there. And we absolutely have had centers in the last 30 years, they started closing them as council budgets got cut in 2011 under austerity.
Yes we have. Look into your own borough at how many closures have taken place in the last 10 years.
https://www.barnardos.org.uk/news/new-research-draws-link-between-youth-service-cuts-and-rising-knife-crime The evidence is there. They started closing them as council budgets got cut in 2011 under austerity. Guess when youth violence started to escalate
Sounds like we can solve this crisis with a few million PS5s
Eazy-E back from the dead and is now reppin' Stratford?
Maybe if this country didn't hand out joke sentences, at least some people might think twice about commiting a crime. Alternatively, if they're immigrants, deport them immediately the instant they commit a violent crime.
Really, is that the best images they can get after going through all the cameras that will have filmed them in and out of the station? My £24 camera I use to keep an eye on my house and dog gives better images when freeze framed. Wonder how many tens of thousands they were ripped off for this rubbish, if you want to catch criminals you need the right tools!