To say enough is enough and that we need more police on the streets and tougher knife penalties

[Jokingnotjoking]

Another attack on a child - 11 year old girl caught in a headlock and stabbed repeatedly by a man with a knife - out with her Mum in Leicester Square today. I just feel scared to do anything now. It just doesn’t feel ‘rare’. Atrocities are commonplace. I don’t care about the man’s mental health or if it’s terror related. Or his bloody colour.

New government - can you make us safe? Am I unreasonable to ask this?

Sorry if the link doesn’t work.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg5xx0gly8o

There used to be more inpatient care. In the late 80s/early 90s there were lots of hospitals for very mentally ill patients that were like villages but secure.

Then care in the community became the thing instead. There were issues with the hospitals with people being institutionslised that could have been part of society.

But care in the community relies a lot more on people taking their own medicine and people contact services themselves when they have an episode. Then the service is busy.

Wheras in hospital the nurses and doctors were there to spot someone was agitated and could control access to knives and ensure medicine was taken.

Anyway, I would expect a distressed schizophrenic whose parents are begging for help, to be somewhere more like that.

We need more police is an easy thing to say but where are they going to come from? Are you going to apply to be one?

We need more of everything! But recruitment and retention for these kinds of services is dire.

Apparently Labour are going to build more prisons (as a pp suggested) but who's going to work in them? The prison service is already massively understaffed.

In the very small department of the CJS I last worked in, there should be 25 staff. They have 10. They've been advertising all over but no one wants the job as the pay doesn't match the stress/workload.

No one wants any of these jobs because they're underfunded and over worked. People who start working in these jobs then leave in their droves because of those issues and so it continues.

Knife violence tends to either be random attacks brought on by severe mental health issues, terrorism, gang related violence or domestic violence.

Stop and search would help more with the gang related stuff, particularly with boys and young men. Mental health or terrorism is most problematic with the random nature of violence.

@Frowningprovidence because they also put people in with disabilities like downs syndrome etc.

Anyone caught carrying a knife or blade should be immediately arrested. There's only one reason you are carrying a knife.

Yes. I am aware there were good reasons for moving to care in the community. I wasn't trying to suggest that institutionalised all those people was good. There are still issues with some people with autism detained under the mental health act in totally unsuitable mental health facilities which is terrifying for me..

But there do seem to be some people that are not coping in the community, who could be looked after in inpatient care for more periods of time and there is definitely less places available for that.

That's an American campaign, and not really applicable in any way to how things work in the UK. As far as I can see, the "defund police" position relates to the way American police- who seem to be funded by their individual towns and cities- are materially well funded-but seemingly lacking in some crucial training- while things like basic infrastructure and mental health services are deprived of money.

Banning knives would treat the symptoms not the cause. Knives would be replaced with another weapon and not necessarily one you would need to buy. A sharpened stick can be lethal. The problem goes far beyond knives.

Well the Nottingham attacks happened because mental health services were woefully inadequate. A doctor even wrote in the patient notes that he was worried Calocane was going to cause serious harm but no action was taken because he wasn't engaging with services. Why wasn't he engaging? Because he was psychotic. His family begged for help and were fobbed off.

That right there is a massive problem.

Mental health services need a shake up, bigger budget, more staff and more inpatient facilities. This would enable them to supervise seriously ill patients until they got well by ensuring they take the medication and provide effective support in the community.

I saw a guy mention on the tele the other day he was in prison in Dubai in a cell with 17 others. Are prisons full? Or could we squeeze more in if we relaxed the rule that there must be 1 PlayStation to every 2 inmates (sarcasm obviously) but why can't we just have more people in a cell?

And I would add have an automatic custodial sentence.

This.

And this is of course why we haven't tackled knife crime properly, because there are a multitude of factors and causes and fixing this sort of stuff, especially this sort of mental illness, is expensive.

A massive thank you to Abdullah for risking his life to save others.

If Abdullah had not been so brave, there may have been more injuries reported.

Knife crime is a big issue that needs addressing, we need to replace all our lost police.

That is absolutely untrue. I’m a taser officer myself. Taser can be used preemptively, even to stop a person harming themselves let alone harming another person.

I am not a firearms officer and would not comment on the policy for firing a gun, but you are completely incorrect that taser can only be fired once someone has been stabbed. That would be absolutely ridiculous.

Thanks@crackofdoom for your response to @Beefcurtains79

Knives are more dangerous than guns, I don’t know how you educate someone who would type that.

Interesting point - I suppose my remark was a bit flippant. What I meant was the sentiment that a suspect’s motives are sometimes attributed to mental health issues as a clumsy ‘reason’ for their act. Clearly, to attempt - or actually - murder is very much down to mental health issues but that does not help the dead victims and their family now.

You are quite right that we need to spot signs early and intervene. And ‘we’ means parents, teachers, neighbours, friends, authorities - which surely, hopefully, combine to make our collective values as a caring people. Something has gone awry to make one’s mentally ill fantasies into a reality. What is it? Social media? Video games? Clash of culture? Access to weapons (anyone can get a knife)? Too many people? Disregard for others’ cultures? Lessened policing, greater reliance on artificial/remote governance forms like CCTV? Lack of listening, compromising? Our own small mindedness? How can we be more tolerant, open, reflective? How can someone’s path to murder be diverted?

Education (I read upthread better conflict resolution in early years) and the arts are mightily important. Very much agree.

I just feel like we need a better sense that we are being looked after while it’s so massively fraught.

I’m no recluse but I’d be lying if I haven’t swerved the thought of heading to Leicester Square or similar this week with my family.

Thanks for all your comments so far, good discussion.

Andrew Pearce from DM was on GMB yesterday and said the Tory's shut 7 prisons.

That's 7/14.

Half the prisons have been sold and shut.

Why?

I agree more police presence on the streets would be good especially in large cities. It all comes down to costs.

There are around 140 prisons in the UK. Not 14.

All that would accomplish is dehumanising and traumatising inmates who will be then released directly into neighbourhoods where we live.
This is the opposite of what we should be doing!

So many vital services were lost or severely under funded over the Tory years. Sure Start,youth services, Police numbers dropped drastically, NHS including mental health services. All suffered from austerity measures, and society is paying the price. Labour can't fix it quickly, it's going to take at least a decade.

We don’t have enough police. Compared to our European neighbours with similar sized economies, we have nearly half the amount compared to Italy and Spain, and around a third less than Germany and France.

As has been said, MH services are also badly in need of more resources. Of course this will cost money, but remember, we’ve managed to waste dozens of billions on the pointless hs2, and also assign over 10k civil servants to Brexit, both hugely expensive projects that produced zero gain to the country.

Depressingly, a lot of recent stuff seems based in misogyny. I don't know how you even begin to tackle that.
So much aimed at women and young girls.

we need uniforms on the street, and they need the power to act if needed.

I agree with you but I can’t see it happening. The Tories reduced police numbers and Starmer and Angela Rayner both ‘took the knee’ in support of BLM - one of whose aims is to defund the police.

Cornishcoast1 it used to be much easier to access inpatient stays for MH. Things have got so bad that a few years ago my then-teenage DN couldn't get admitted until the 3rd time she attempted suicide (the 1st two weren't serious enough tries apparently), and even then it was down to DSiL kicking up a monumental fuss plus a few strings pulled from a family member working in SS. She should have been offered help the first time her mum took her to the GP because she was spiralling and having intrusive thoughts. Instead, DSiL spent months not sleeping at night so she could ensure DN wasn't trying to kill herself while she slept, and locking up all medicine, sharp objects and anything else that might pose a risk.