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

Sadly, most of the asylums (and they did provide asylum in the truest sense of the word) were closed down to save money. The 'care' in the community rarely materialised
Many of these asylums were places of cruellty though. Staff were as institutionalsed as much as the patients, and little therapeutic care was given. They spent their time teasing general nursing students on their psyche placement.

Good point. The minimal mental health services provision and lack of policing and inadequate education (removal of Sure Start centres, low police recruitment, teachers leaving under workload pressures) plus a burgeoning incel culture is perhaps resulting in this crisis. And it does all boil down to money but also the sensible placing of it. I need to better understand the long term plan.

And if we hadn't had 14 years of the Tories fucking the country up, we'd probably have both.

YANBU.

Starmer used to be DPP. His response to the riots has been swift and decisive. I don't think he wants to defund anybody. At least he hasn't gone on holiday in the middle of it.

His response to the riots has been swift and decisive.

Yes it has. Will he be as swift and decisive about dealing with knife crime and burglaries?

@Justrolledmyeyesoutloud "We are so smug that we don't have guns in this country, but knives can be just as deadly "

Absolutely awful though though these events are, you do know that's a daft thing to say,don't you?

Yes well done to Abdullah!

From what I've heard from friends in the NHS and from what I've read, patients with schizophrenia are stabilised in hospital and then go back home. The problem is they often feel well and think they don't need the medicine they're supposed to take and then end up ill again and going back to hospital. This can go round and round and round with no long term resolution. Care in the community is not enough, if they don't answer the door to the weekly call then often nothing happens. Most people with schizophrenia are more of a danger to themselves than others, but when someone starts to become violent and then decides to stop their medication it can become very dangerous.

This is what happened in the Nottingham attacks, Valdo Calocane was sectioned 4 times and was becoming increasingly violent. MH services just discharged him to a GP due to non engagement. What is a GP able to do for a psychotic person with paranoid schizophrenia who has become increasingly violent?

We already struggle to recruit prison officers.

Because we don't treat humans like battery hens.

Adequate mental health services is the starting point

Many years ago I worked in the social services part of the mental health team - subsequently this was integrated with the NHS. There's the medical/psychiatric side i..e overseen by a psychiatrist which involves appropriate medication, assessments etc. and the community side - there are community psychiatric nurses who have clients under their supervision in the community. The social work side was pretty nuanced to be honest and ours was aligned with a social worker for drugs and alcohol services. Most of our clients we had day to day dealings were managed well and integrated into the community (country town in the south west). They had regular reviews and contact with their designated social worker. If any of them presented concerns then they would be referred onto the NHS side.

My husband started up and chaired a mental health advocacy forum to ensure the clients were listened to and their needs advocated for if necessary. There would also be multi-disciplinary case conferences.

This was then, when there were more resources available. Now resources are so stretched and we see the result. There is no quick fix with it - in my opinion.
In an ideal world early years centres (previously Sure Start - abolished by the Conservatives) would be up and running again to support parents. Education more tailored to the needs of the child with safe, therapeutic spaces for those struggling. I think there needs to be massive reform of the curriculum and also structure in schools. What stressful places they are now and how many young people are crushed by the system. All these things contribute to adult problems later on.

Much more money needs to flow into the mental health services and a complete review, in my opinion, of how they operate and safeguard both the public and their clients. Very challenging and can only be achieved in the very long term, if then.

I haven't rtwt but what strikes me is that while police on the streets and tough sentences are important, they're both too late.
Prevention is what's needed and this takes time, great skill and investment.
There doesn't seem to be the will to do what's required amongst the public as a whole. Catching someone after they're stabbed someone is surely not better than intervening before they commit that crime, however we choose to sentence them.

You would need a police officer on every street in the country. More police, or re-deploying police to walk the streets is not the answer. Having officers patrolling on foot is an incredibly inefficient use of resources.

Sorry no l don't think it is daft but thanks for dismissing my opinion.
Every day on the news there is another stabbing (or even more) being reported on.
Who knows how that could have escalated in Leicester Sq yesterday?
Ok so a knife can't wipe out loads of people as quickly as a gun can but sure the victims of all the recent stabbings would probably agree.

But then there would be complaints of 'I'm being picked on' which seems ironic when it could be their own weapon that ends up killing them in the first place, never mind the 'it's OK thry have had a bad childhood so it's understandable when they kill someome'

It's ridiculous

More police on the streets would be great, but I don't think it will solve the issue of knife crime, which is a complex one and wrapped up in gangs, disaffected sub-cultures and the way society is currently structured.

I think police are only a part of the solution.

It's not just mental health services failure it's the failure of Society in general. The majority of knife crime is gang/violence related not mental health. Knife crime against Women and children makes the headlines more than the knife crimes against men. The majority of knife crime is against men, not mental health related and not sensational enough to make headlines. Simultaneous Misogyny and Misandry.

Liberal attitudes and the poor you approach to criminals needs to stop.

@Justrolledmyeyesoutloud "Who knows how that could have escalated in Leicester Sq yesterday"

If he had had a gun we wouldn't need to wonder how it might have escalated. We would know.

I feel an insidious, deep hatred of women and girls developing in our society. These types of stabbings are often targeted at females and the trend is concerning. I wish Starmer would address that

Bickering about whether knives or guns are worse is so beside the point it’s ridiculous. Are you 12 year old boys?

What’s clear is that there have been several of these incidents recently where the perpetrators quite clearly shouldn’t have been out on the streets as they were a danger to everyone around them. And that suggests that something is wrong in the services that are supposed to identify them and address that danger, whether that’s NHS mental health services, social services, the police or the probation system. Probably a mix of all of them.

He's been in post about five weeks. Give the guy a chance. He's got 14 years of destruction and incompetence to tunr round.