The Home Secretary Amber Rudd has at last been propelled into action over street violence and gang criminality by the increasing number of dead teenagers and young people in London and elsewhere. Ms Rudd has promised £40M of public money to divert young people away from crime and this funding will also support police activity to disrupt criminal gangs.

I can’t help thinking that these are empty words from Ms Rudd, this problem has been growing for years and little effective has been done about it by the Home Office, either under Ms Rudd’s stewardship of the department or under the previous Home Secretary Theresa May. I also believe that much of the money promised will end up being wasted on worthless, left-biased ‘social work’ type projects that will not deal with underlying problems but will instead provide a nice little earner for those running such projects.

Much of the headline grabbing policies that have been announced, such as a ban on carrying corrosive substances in public and forbidding people from buying knives online along with a total ban, even in private homes of the ownership of knuckledusters, are probably going to be ineffective. A near total ban on the possession of firearms and a beefing up over the years of Section Five of the Firearms Acts, has not stopped handguns being used in London and elsewhere in the commission of crime, so it is unlikely that any of these measures will affect the criminals who are not going to obey these laws in the first place.

Until the structural and cultural problems that lie at the root of the problems of street violence and gang violence have been solved it is likely that Rudd’s proposals will fail dismally. A sea change not tinkering around the edges of policy is required here. This sea change will mean beefing up the vigour and discipline in schools, showing societal intolerance towards the families who produce these thugs and much greater protection for those families who are working hard to keep their offspring on the straight and narrow. Proper and meaningful change will also require the police to re-prioritise themselves away from worthless guff such as sitting on their arses monitoring Twitter for ‘racism’. The police, who we all pay handsomely to protect us need to be getting out on the streets and disrupting the criminals that make decent families lives a misery in places like Hackney, Harringey, Newham and Waltham Forest in London and in the other places that are afflicted by this violence. Until meaningful change occurs I shall consider Amber Rudd’s words to be sound and fury signifying very little at all.

Link

Sky News story about Amber Rudd’s latest announcement on gang violence

https://news.sky.com/story/amber-rudd-vows-to-do-whatever-it-takes-to-stop-violent-crime-11323570