The government’s avowed intention to increase investment in early intervention is of course an acknowledgment that austerity is a (possibly the) major factor behind the rise in crime, especially among children (Police cuts omitted as Rudd unveils strategy to tackle violent crime, 10 April). The arguments quoted in Amber Rudd’s paper do not suggest that police cuts alone account for them: comparing historic variations between crime and police numbers, not to mention current variations between the cuts and rates in different forces, strongly suggest that there is more to the surge.
Almost all those who know the communities concerned point to the sharp decline in community resources: “savage” cuts to Sure Start and youth clubs, the abolition of the education maintenance allowance, the callous dumping of kinship carers, the collapse of the apprenticeship scheme and continued neglect of vocational education generally. It all adds up to a catastrophe for the younger generation and particularly for vulnerable families. If there is a dominant factor, it’s probably the massive undervaluation of women’s roles, much worse since 2010 and putting huge pressure on mothers.
Starting all over again and recreating what coalition and Conservative governments have destroyed since 2010 will be incredibly expensive, and impossible to achieve in the short term: youth clubs, for example, can be worse than useless unless run by staff who really know what they are doing, and they do not come cheap or quickly (and should not). One facility that could have helped (and was helping) is early intervention charities which work through volunteers, like Home Start. But these have been decimated too: anyone who works in charities knows that funding has drastically decreased since 2010, and local authorities don’t have the money to make grants as they used to. Government has created a desert and called it a long-term economic plan. Deserts are difficult to cultivate. At best, we are in for the long haul.
Jeremy Cushing
Exeter
• Hugh Muir is right to ask if there is enough space in the press to flag up chronic conditions before tragedy strikes. Probably not (Knife crime: news headlines are predictable – but they don’t have to be, 9 April). Some of us have been flagging up chronic conditions for over 30 years and ask whether those in power would take any notice if the press did add its considerable weight.
The chronic condition that encourages the entrepreneurial spirit of youth down such damaging paths has been raised in your letters page since 1990: it is the totally inadequate single adult unemployment income of £73.10 a week. The income from 16 to 25 years is far worse at £57.90 a week, which can be stopped completely by the jobcentre for up to three months. It has been losing value since 1979 and frozen since 2011.
An impoverished young mule can make £50 a time carrying a lethal load for a dealer. The competition for a very lucrative market is fierce. It has been talking to young people in prison that helps gain an understanding of how they cope with poverty.
Rev Paul Nicolson
Taxpayers Against Poverty
• Iceland in the 1990s found a way to stop its young people abusing drugs and alcohol and becoming a social menace. A lesson from which London could learn. As highlighted in New Scientist (7 April 2018), the Iceland authorities were advised by Harvey Milkman, addiction expert at Metropolitan State University of Denver, Colorado, who suggested that teens be given a healthier high, ie sports. As a result, Iceland introduced a night-time curfew for 13- to 16-year-olds and invested in sports, dance and arts programmes. Teachers, parents, journalists and politicians all came on board to enforce the new social norm that excessive use of drugs and alcohol was no longer acceptable. By 1998 there was a decline in substance abuse and today it is regarded as an unqualified success. They still have a curfew and according to Milkman “Everybody’s proud of it”.
With more investment in sports, dance and the arts, targeted towards young people, areas that have suffered swinging cuts in the UK, we too could provide an alternative high for our young people. This together with a lack of tolerance of excessive use of drugs and alcohol throughout society would help, as would the over-prevalence of alcohol in every soap opera and reference to drugs and violence in pop culture. An investment in our young people before it is too late, along with more policing of our streets, would help reduce gang violence.
Rosemary Bentley
Egham, Surrey
• Neither the government nor the main opposition are paying attention to a crucial element in the policing crisis. Although sheer numbers of officers are plainly fundamental in combatting violent (or indeed any) crime, the manner of their deployment may well be more so. Living as I do in the market town in which I grew up and practised as a lawyer at the start of my career, that is glaringly clear. The police then were, by today’s standards, embedded in this community even to the point of being widely known by name. Today you are lucky to see a copper from one week to the next, other than speeding by.
By staying in the local force (as it then was) often for decades, police really got to know how the town ticked and who was who, and hence became trusted repositories of invaluable informal intelligence. Add to all that the local magistrates courts that then functioned in every major community (Sudbury also had a county court), which were presided over by leading local citizens and fully reported in local papers, and the contrast is near total. Until we start to recover some of these organic, communal virtues I see little hope, especially as the myth still prevails that the “answer” is more laws. It would be funny if it were not tragic.
Andrew Phillips
Sudbury, Suffolk
• The government should reflect on the similarity between youths carrying knives for deterrence and self-defence and nation states investing massively in arms for the same reason. Perhaps it should lead by example rather than ineffective rhetoric.
Roger Squires
St Andrews, Fife
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- The letter above from the Rev Paul Nicolson was amended on 11 April 2018. An earlier version gave a figure of £59.70 where £57.90 was meant.
