To wonder who is actually responsible for rising murder rates in london

[SaucyJane]

So slimy frog faced Nigel Farage is blaming Sadiq Khan as mayor and particularly for reducing stop and search. There are also other calls for Khan to resign.

But surely there is only so much Khan can do if the government makes huge cuts to the police. And weren't those cuts made under Maggie May?

I didn't vote for Khan to be the mayor, and I am no fan of his, but it seems to me that it is unfair to blame it on him, and that the answer is probably partly government cuts and partly some of his changes since being mayor.

AIBU?

There is only one answer to this question. As a country, we are too damn soft on murderous scum criminals.

Bit rich you telling me to ‘come out with it’ Vladimir. I’ve been perfectly open that I think it must be the fault of Khan’s policies because the other supposed causes like cuts are happening elsewhere without the accompanying increase in murder numbers.

The only person who seems to be having trouble ‘coming out with it’ is you. You’re the only one who is saying they apparently have the answer to why this is happening but refusing to say what it is. Please enlighten us if you can.

Mrs frumble a rate should take population into account. Of course there is also population density which is higher in London nd I suspect also plays a part.

Sadiq Khan has to take responsibility, he is the boss in London, the buck stops with him. He has decreased stop and search and he has not hired the police he promised to he lied to get elected. He is soft on crime and that is why it is rising.
One partial solution to the drug & related crime is to legalise some drugs. Any one brave enough to grasp the nettle?

SPB yeah, I thought about that after I posted. But you're right, I think population density plays a part.

Apparently there are some reports saying "SHOCK london murder rate now worse than new york!!!" but if you look, london is reltively static and NY is coming DOWN. So real headline would be - "Great news! NY murder rate down!"."

Not quite, its a bit of both. New york coming down is in some circles being because of gentrification etc.

This is the graph from the economist.

i.redd.it/ionox01jbwp01.png

lead poisoning....

There is a huge correlation with lead levels in the blood stream of children and violent crime.

Lead levels were falling because of unleaded petrol becoming the norm...now I wonder if lead levels are rising again.

One key source of lead in children's blood that may well be on the increase is all the lead paint people put in houses in the 80s that is now starting to flake off.

Its relatively easy to check the paint falling off the walls of your house, and I would recommend anyone living in older housing stock to do so, particularly if you don't want your child to develop violent tendencies as an adult.

I think it must be the fault of Khan’s policies because the other supposed causes like cuts are happening elsewhere without the accompanying increase in murder numbers.

You can't compare London to other regions or cities in the UK. Because that's a false comparison.

I have already said that there is a great deal of disenfranchisement among some young people. Others have suggested the closure and stripping down of community centres/groups/initiatives and task forces. I don't think anyone has the 'answer' it's clearly a multi-faceted societal ill.

Surely it slinked to a reduction in stop and search.

I'm sorr, but I think the poor police in this country are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

ah I didn't say who I thought was responsible for lead poisoning of children....

SO in reference to the OP I think parents should take as much care about lead paint in their houses as they would about asbestos. The fact they don't is down to the government failing to let people know how serious the risks are and parents not taking responsibility.

I see a repeated "broken families" theme here. I live in central London. It isn't just kids from broken backgrounds at all, often they are from migrant families - parents together, employed, strong family unit but housed in challenging areas and perhaps lacking awareness of the issues their youngsters are facing and coming up against each day in these areas and their education environment. A police officer told me this. He also said "the streets you live and move around on as a thirty something woman are very different to the ones a 15 year old male is negotiating. You think you live in a good area, you do, for YOU, not for a boy surrounded by criminal elements and gangs, these are daily interactions you will never have to deal with in the way that he does, for those kids it can be like living in a war zone".

I have already said that there is a great deal of disenfranchisement among some young people. Others have suggested the closure and stripping down of community centres/groups/initiatives and task forces. I don't think anyone has the 'answer' it's clearly a multi-faceted societal ill.

And as I’ve already said the same thing is happening across the country without such dramatic increases in murder rates ergo the increase cannot be down to these factors as it would mean they were duplicated elsewhere.

You can't compare London to other regions or cities in the UK. Because that's a false comparison.

You keep parroting this but you don’t seem to be able to explain why despite being asked to.

You keep ignoring the parts of London where to compare would be a false equivalency (policing policy). And pointing instead to areas where equivalency is totally justified (overall cut levels) and just keep parrotting ‘oh, but you can’t compare’ without giving any sort of logical reason why not.

Incidentally, if the cause is cuts to social projects, that would have to be laid at Khan’s door too. Because every single other local authority has faced similar cuts to the same services without those cuts leading to a rocketing murder rate. So it’s perfectly logical to say that it can’t be the cuts per se which have caused the increase, but instead the way they were implemented.

And who implemented them? Sadiq Khan.

You can tie yourself in knots and quote labourbot soundbites for the next month vladimir, there’s no getting away from the fact that this is Khan’s problem.

And him shrugging and saying ‘I can’t do anything, it’s the cuts’ when every single local authority is performing better in this regard while facing the same cuts just makes him look even more inept and useless than he already does.

I've spent time working on a project that aimed to stop youngsters joining the gangs in the first place and I would agree with everything nightmanager said. It is also a problem with parenting - a lot of children who are recruited into gangs are latchkey kids from single parent families. Their mothers are usually working all the hours god sends in low paid jobs in the health sector and similar in order to support their children in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Their fathers often get away with paying nothing or next to it and do little to help. If they're lucky they have a grandmother or aunt who helps out but often the first time they have an older male "role model" is when they are groomed by the gangs.

Good youth work projects I've dealt with over the years are continually competing against each other for money and struggling along from one funding application to the next which is a big waste of time that could better be spent dealing with the social problems they are set up to address. Good youth workers also end up having to give up and find alternative employment as charities are on such a shoe string they prefer to employ lots of people under the NI threshold rather than a few of the very best and have to find the employers NI for them.

Lead in paint has been banned for a long time and it is not generally airborne so you would have to be eating the paint (the original scares were on children's toys being licked by toddlers IIRC).
There are however lead pipes in older properties which may be relevant.

Lack of moral guidance and proper gainful employment. No one seems to be thinking through the fact that there are fewer jobs overall so both the young and old are left with a lot of 'spare' time. This will only get worse as there are increasing numbers of people and all the fabulous new technology and robots creating even more 'leisure' time.

I live in one of the areas affected be a shooting two days ago and teach in the other. The reasons for this have their roots in the usual suspects of poverty, low self-esteem, limited ambition and environment. I’ve taught children as young as 8 who’ve barely left the estate they’ve grown up on and dream of being ‘a bad man’. They see it as something to aspire to. Often the family units they come from are fragmented or the parents are recent immigrants who speak little English and have little to no idea what they’re children are up to.

Many of these young people have little to no aspiration sadly, and no examples of how to behave. The lack of a family unit means they crave the feeling of belonging to something and that can be a gang.
I’ve had an 11 year boy in my class confess to me that he was a ‘watcher’ for some older boys. They told him if he did a good job he could ‘carry’ for them. And so it starts.

The resources for people like me to deal with this have grown fewer, and combine that with the cuts to police, you can imagine the impact. I’m in no way saying this is a comprehensive account of the reasons young violent crime is rising and I’m not absolving anyone of their individual responsibility, but I can see the cracks, not only forming, but widening.

The causes are changing demographics, political policing which means stop and search tactics have been curtailed, and a general climate of lawlessness. Lawlessness is encouraged by a police force that is unable to tackle, for example, the outrage of moped gangs operating with impunity in broad daylight, while deploying what seems to be inordinate resources on social media "hate crime". The police force has become a joke. Ridiculed by criminals and despised by the law-abiding.

The only way to disrupt this slide into disorder is utter ruthlessness as was deployed in New York in the 1980s. Unfortunately it isn't the British style. We'll probably just build more "community centres" in the hope that we can bribe the gangs and criminals out of their violent hobbies.

This is the second thread in a few days where I've seen lack of child support highlighted as a huge issue. Surely this is one that can be tackled. It is a bigger burning injustice than the pay gap that was in the news a couple of days ago that some men (mostly) have children and walk away. We can't make them face up to their responsibility as a parent but we can damn well make them pay, a decent amount, regularly and on time. Surely.

If you can't see any "logical" reason why they can't be compared then I'm afraid I can't teach common-sense or critical thinking. That ship apparently sailed without you on-board.

Because every single other local authority has faced similar cuts to the same services without those cuts leading to a rocketing murder rate.

This isn't how local government works. And there isn't a "rocketing" murder rate.

This is the problem with trying to have a sensible discussion about social issues; people spout the most random hyperbole then attempt to justify it as 'logic'. I can't be bothered.

Everything bluebeck said with bells on, if you were a police officer you'd know

Massive reduction in police - about 20% I think. That’s a government responsibility. Locally, lots of the smaller stations have closed and there’s very limited police presence on the streets because, well, there aren’t as many of them!

Join this up with a general reduction in caring budgets and “extras” - youth clubs, teen interventions, counselling, social services and you’ve got increased likelihood of crime alongside a reduction in police on the beat.

Incidentally, where I live (leafy suburban London, aging population, quite rich) there hasn’t necessarily been an increase in crime per se - but because people have a greater fear of crime, there is a perceived increase and that trends to have a knock on effect in terms of reporting. Plus police are increasingly taking on a social service or mental health role as local nhs services are stretched. So some antisocial behaviour could be related to alcohol abuse, or poor mental health treatment and so on, which leads to the police being tied up in dealing with the aftermath.

Stop and search rates in London have been falling since 2011; 5 years before Sadiq Khan was elected. According to the graph in the BBC article there were 600,000 in 2009, down to less than 200,000 in 2016. This fall happened while Boris Johnson was mayor. Why would this be blamed on Khan and not him?

Austerity definitely hasn't helped. ..less social care provision, more young people caught in the poverty trap, fewer police.

For those saying it's not so bad, it does feel bad at the moment tbh. I live near Walthamstow and there have been two deaths, one life changing injury in the last two days. Another death a few weeks back and his mother was on a local Fbook group earlier today, trying to describe how devastated her life was. It feels bad.

I think there is a myriad of reasons. I definitely think the level of violence has increased since my youth.

I have to say I’m disappointed in Khan.

I think that some of it also has to do with the crack down on parental control which, quite rightly, is to protect children from being abused.

However, it has also made children significantly less fearful of their parents. My parents generation the smaller crimes resulted in punishment (physical) which helped to prevent the escalation into far more serious crimes.

Parents now become powerless if their child doesn't respond to non physical punishment. They approach the authorities for help but they are too short funded to do anything.