What would STW if the hive mind were home secretary?
What would STW if the hive mind were home secretary
appoint a minister for cryptic online posts.
Que?
Lock ‘em all up and throw away the key.....the politicians that is and get people in who understand the research and how apply it and what ever they do evaluate it properly for next time this happens.
Increase the budget for the police and education for starters.
Get the experts into a room and ask how much they needed.
But if you want the off the top of my head answers
More Community policing
More funding for education and training
Pathways from prison to work with training and help
Drug treatment programs
That would be a start
If I were Home Secretary worried about knife crime?
I'd copy Scotland...
I'm not convinced that it was anything other than us getting kinda lucky up here. The gang culture died away organically, thankfully.
I'd legalise da urb and bring back the stocks and make cats illegal
https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2017/dec/03/how-scotland-reduced-knife-deaths-among-young-people
An interesting perspective on the Scottish example, seems a lot more than the problem just going away.
Pathways from prison to work with training and help
Drug treatment programs
Like what's been happening for years anyway & never been particularly successful?
There's going to be no magic wave of the hand to stop knife crime now, that's for sure. Kids need to learn right & wrong from an early age & sadly that doesn't happen as much as it should.
Like what’s been happening for years anyway & never been particularly successful?
Was it ever fully or properly funded?
Did we ever do enough, of course kids should learn right from wrong but also must have a way back if things go wrong.
No single thing will fix this but there is a lot that can be done
We’re not going to get anywhere until we look at the bigger picture and acknowledge that the drugs laws as they stand are totally ineffective and are just fuelling the violence on the streets.
Was it ever fully or properly funded?
Judging by the amount of drug workers & offender management staff employed in our prisons (or at least the 3 I worked in) I'd say yes.
You simply cannot rehabilitate someone who doesn't want to be rehabilitated & a massive majority of current prisoners are in that bracket. It's simply a lifestyle that needs to be broken well before prison looms.
I’d copy Scotland…
Batter them ?
^ no, just make it really cold outside ....
I think STW's favourite clinical psychologist nails it here
Slightly OT - Question time has some seriously intense introductory music.
Non of the govt (past and present) has the guts to deal with the problem without being accused of heavy handed or fear losing votes.
Stop pretending it's all about gangs. And just to get it said, stop pretending that "black on black" is different from anything else- there's a reason it's getting talked about more today and that's shit. Take it out of politics, if possible- we don't need people playing games with kids' lives or posturing on how hard they can be on crime (while ignoring calls from police for more resources) or profiting from public fear, we need people to do what works- which it turns out, has been tried tested and proved in Glasgow and ignored everywhere else. And once you accept that what we're doing doesn't work, and what does work, do that and spend whatever it needs spending on it.
The hardest part inevitably is the politics not the policing or anything else. But hey, brexity brexit, red white and blue wanton criminality, tough on youth tough on the causes of youth.
Maybe more controversial but I'd drop the widespread use of stop and search- it soaks resources on a massive scale, it's usually mistargeted, it undermines the police/policed bond, and it doesn't really work. if you took 90% of the officer time spent on this and put it into actual intelligence led policing, I bet 10p you'd see results.
A decade of austerity means we've never recovered from the 2008 crash, the teenagers being caught up in this are the first generation of children since the 70s who've seen school funding decrease rather than increase
crushing the opportunities of many before theyve had a chance.
Likewise youth services has seen £500m cut since 2010 , withh 1000s of youth clubs & centres closed.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/10/teenagers-isolated-idle-youth-clubs-services-closed
surely no one can think that this wont have had an impact
on top of that huge cuts to policing, ignored once again by the Home Secretary & now PM that oversaw most of them....
As a father of young children I fear it will get only much worse
@Northwind, I know JP is marmite, but that is exactly what he said. The 'why' is the most important part, who is largely irrelevant until we know why. Stop and search is poor and creates division, gathering intelligence and using it for targetted strikes on those carrying out these crimes is what need to happen.
@kimbers, it's a multi-faceted issue, as you've noted there, add in lack of resources and funding for the police and it's a shit sandwich that young kids are taking a bite out of. No support to try and tempt these kids away from this life while a poorly resourced police force cannot scoop up the shithead 'role-models'.
@greenskin a stopped clock can be right twice a day 😉
But also +1 Northwind and Kimbers it's a tragic state of affairs that show no real sign of a turnaround.
and as above I agree that by the time some people make it to prison it could be too late, but the cost of not trying must be too high, writing people off is not a good option. How those people have been treated up to the point it goes really wrong is important. The methods outlined in the Guardian article from Scotland do make some sense - it was a collective and organised effort, properly joined up and integrated which is not something that can be said for even public services at the moment.
@mikewsmith When he sticks to matters of psychology he's usually on point, it's when he drifts off down his current avenues he gets "confusing". If I'm honest I much prefer Dr. Phil.
Anyhoo, agree with you, but as @esselgruntfuttock stated, some of these individuals give no ****s about other people, they need putting in holes for a long time, those that want to rehabilitate should be given every opportunity as well as programs of intervention for the more impressionable caught up in this madness.
I hate to say it, really hate to say it but I agree with JP on that point. These kids are labeled as criminal before they've even started school because of their social status and post code. We need to tackle poverty and provide opportunity, but the policies which support social mobility aren't there because they require collective social economical investment in services such as transport, housing, social insurance and health care
I genuinely don't understand the Animus aimed at JP. He works at a University which you have to be really good to get a job at. He has something like 3000 hours of videos of his lectures up on various sites and clearly really, really knows his stuff. I am not a fan of self-help books in general but if we have to have them I think I'd rather he wrote them than Anthony Robbins or Gwyneth Paltrow.
And he clearly is the only one in that video that is actually more interested in solving the problem than solving it in the politically appropriate way.
Free helicopter rides courtesy of Duterte?
Ah an issue that seperates the idea the the UK Government(s) is shite whilst being in the EU.
About time.
As per lots of people above. Get the money spent. 20,000 coppers would take 2 years to implement according to police chap on LBC.
May's interview on this is despicable - like the fox hunting mob they would be better off admitting they don't actually care.
We can justify the money through MMT.
No excuses other than political choice.
As others have said here tackling the causes of crime would be required to make a difference. Poverty is the real problem.
A long term approach like Glasgow's VRU. Allied with education and methods to alleviate poverty. Policing spending needs to increase.
A nice counter to May's shite was "if there was no correlation between crime and policing numbers why do we need police?"
Maybe more controversial but I’d drop the widespread use of stop and search- it soaks resources on a massive scale
The universally respected Scottish model started with massively increased amounts of stop and search, and increased mandatory prison sentences for carrying a knife.
Just caught the end of some idiot politician on the news saying that the police should remember they can always deploy the army if they’re short of resources- moronic soundbite kind of completely missing the issue in question
We live in a society that has completely abandoned the remotest pretence at social mobility.
Born on some shithole estate? Then you'll go to a failing school and you'll have zero life chances and stay on that sink estate for the rest of your life. All while we starve the public sector of resources to remove anything that made this existance even slightly tolerable.
The best bit is that due to the massive, totally unchallenged social inequality, the middle classes kids will continue to do well, get a decent education and move into well-paid fulfilling careers through the same accident of birth that condemned you to a life in poverty.
And we wonder why these kids are acting desperate? Seriously?
I note that the demands that something must be done have only really been ratcheted up once a couple of nice, middle class white kids have been caught in the crossfire
Nick’s Scottish solution is all well and good, but we should also be tackling the problem: ‘If I don’t feel part of society, why abide by society’s rules’? Make these disaffected and marginalised youngsters feel part of society.
We were talking about this yesterday and the thing that worries me is that, I believe, the two murders at the weekend weren’t gang or organised crime related*. Someone just thought, after a bit of deliberation, I’m going to stab that person to death, for the hell of it. That surely is a step closer to anarchy and something that needs to be addressed urgently regardless of who’s getting stabbed*?
*EDIT: Cynical Binners, cynical.
*EDIT: Cynical Binners, cynical.
But pretty accurate
We seem to be living in a society were we concentrate on our own little boxes of victimhood (ok there are probably better words (like ones that exist)) and fight among ourselves, rather than noticing the lack of social mobility and opportunities for a significant portion of the population
Bonners may be cynical but I admit to having the same thought.
Interesting mix of views here.
Btw, who here lives in an area of high knife crime? Is there any where that isn't! Living in SE19, a nice quiet residential bit, I still cycle work in Victoria past the site of 2 separate stabbings in Camberwell/kennington, I pass a load of flowers left for another going to the corner shop for milk, and can think of at least one other recent and very close death which I just past on the bus (tulse hill). I tend to think a few more police would help, although do they work efficiently? Cycling home last night I passed the scene of what looked like the police having caught a score on a scooter... Or perhaps it was just a scooter accident. 4 or 5 police vehicles and loads of officers seemed like they weren't all needed.
Btw, who here lives in an area of high knife crime?
Depends what you call high knife crime. I live in Hereford. A quiet small city on the Welsh border. In the last five years I think there have been about 4 fatal stabbings, not sure how many non fatal.
To me that seems high for a town where before that there might have been 1 in the previous 15 years.
The Glasgow model was not just increased stop 'n' search. There was a lot of community work. There was a documentary on it recently.
I think this is it:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01m7c1x/p01m72x1
The Glasgow model was not just increased stop ‘n’ search.
No it wasn't, but it was a part of the programme at the start. You essentially still have to find the knives and confiscate them to get them off the street. What the Polis did find was that stop and search had limited effect as they soon found out a large percentage of knife carriers were in fact middle class lads that wouldn't have been targeted anyway. But they also did have a programme of showing the effect of knife injuries on victims and families, point out to known drug gang members that they had intelligence on them and came down hard on them. It wasn't all social work and education, there was strict and tough policing alongside it. Plus the Scottish model was done at a point when the cops had much better funding and numbers of officers,
NorthwindStop pretending it’s all about gangs
Shame the experts say that it is :
"Without any shadow of a doubt, gangs have always been present in the periphery as a phenomenon of our culture," said award-winning professor David Wilson."
"Mr Wilson, a criminology professor at Birmingham City University, who is also a former prison governor and an author, added: "Without a doubt, we are seeing a lot more young people using knives in the context of gangs and organised crime."
Knife offenders that do community service (preferable) or go to jail have to wear pink uniforms.
Post pictures of them in their pink uniforms on social media feeds.
The prospect of being embarassed in public will put them off as it will affect their street cred.
More having to apologise to their victims families, also fed on social media, and maybe also in pink uniforms.
More stop-and-search, but actually properly randomised rather than 'intelligence-led' - which just leds to accusations of prejudice/profiling/etc. Stop and search with metal detecting wands rather than pat-down so the whole process is faster and less intrusive for those stopped.
Build more community infrastructure in desolate areas with high crime because there's little for the kids to do.
Train the older kids in the skills to build the infrastructure themselves, sort of an apprenticeship and a development of skills. Vandalism of that infrastructure might then be reduced as it was built by the community - the community will probably also 'know' the vandals so reducing the incentive to do it.
Knife offenders that do community service (preferable) or go to jail have to wear pink uniforms.
But that implies an association between pink clothing and homosexuality and that homosexuality is something to be embarrassed about. People will be offended.
Shame the experts say that it is :
One experts has said that it is. Other experts have said that an explosion of middle class drug use is also fuelling it.
I would agree with that; we live in a decent area in the Ribble Valley but last year we had a problem with yoofs hanging around a house in our street and it wasn't long before the same black Golf began turning up and kids making visits to the driver's window. We gave the reg to the Police and didn't see the car again. The owner of the house was allowing her daughter's friends and hangers-on to sit in her car port smoking, drinking and partying. She died of cancer and the kids have disappeared, to everybody's relief.
Post pictures of them in their pink uniforms on social media feeds.
The prospect of being embarassed in public will put them off as it will affect their street cred.
Yes, of course it will.
Meanwhile back in the real world; The polar opposite would happen. They'd be getting worn around the estates as a badge of honour within a week! Because it won't be conflated with homosexuality at all. It will be a signpost to say that you've done 'time' for shanking someone and therefore are not to be messed with
I think if you are desperately insecure about your sexuality you may be seen it as a punishment
otherwise, itll just be a pink jumpsuit
the home office have known for years that cutting police has led to a rise in drug/gang/knife violence
but they still wont acknowledge it in their official strategy
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43694062
As to the Ops statement, what would I do if Home sec?
I'd be stopping and searching middle class people falling out of night clubs at 3am on Sat morning. and come down down on them like a shit tonne of bricks. I would hope that a couple of months of shaking down their customers and some months in the nick for posh folk would soon see a downturn in sales of drugs...
TurnerGuy
Member
Northwind
Stop pretending it’s all about gangs
Shame the experts say that it is :
If at any point you have an expert saying it's all about gangs it might make the point you are trying to make.
Gangs are part of the problem but not all of it.
Other experts have said that an explosion of middle class drug use is also fuelling it.
Drug supply is kind of a key gang activity. County lines and all that shizzle
If I was Home Sec, I would follow the last few incumbents steer and do **** all about it.
Then I’d lie in public and the news media proclaiming that there are strategies in place “for this sort of thing”
Then I would go on holiday behind my desk and complete 46page expenses claim forms out.
And jump in a Jag to take me to my pile in the Burbs.
HTHs
The key points of the Scottish anti knife programme are that there is no simple solution (you have to take a joined up, multi agency approach) and you have to spend some money.
It's looking like the two 17 years olds involved in the stabbing in Hale are local and from wealthy families. This 'knife' culture is too accepted with teens/the norm.
That's 3 families lives ruined !
I’d be stopping and searching middle class people falling out of night clubs at 3am on Sat morning. and come down down on them like a shit tonne of bricks. I would hope that a couple of months of shaking down their customers and some months in the nick for posh folk would soon see a downturn in sales of drugs…
The trouble with that is that cocaine use in this country is now absolutely endemic. It crosses all class and social barriers. Its fine for Sadiq Khan to bang on about the middle classes doing it at dinner parties (which they do), but what about the gang of builders and plasterers having a post-work pint in the local boozer who are suspiciously in and out of the bogs every 5 minutes? What about the students on their way to a gig who've chipped in for a couple of g's between them? And... And... And...
Why do you think these gangs will kill to protect their share of this market? Because its absolutely HUGE! It represents billions and billions in turnover.
The 'War on Drugs' has compressively failed. It did so decades ago. But nobody is allowed to state this truism.
Until we accept this and start to debate a new approach to the reality we find ourselves with, absolutely nothing will change. It is a total waste of police time and resources that could be far better targeted into education, treatment of addiction and addressing social issues around the drug trade (both use and supply)
We need to grow up, basically, and stop letting drug policy be dictated by hysterical Daily Mail headlines.
Otherwise, all the people above will carry on doing what they're doing, and the gangs will continue to kill each other in the streets for control of the supply
As with any change you have to go back and undo all the things that may have caused it - largely socio-economic problems caused by more inequality, less funding (schools, care), less policing etc,. Austerity is a very big part of this along with greater inequality.
Catching people with knives or increasing penalties is dealing with it when it is too late and although it would make the Daily Mail reader feel better it won't actually resolve the problem.
ok, if you don't like the idea of pink uniforms (it was based on a story of an area that had problems with gangs hanging around on a street corner which happened to have a telephone exchange box - they painted the box pink and suddenly the gang didn't hang around there anymore), then take an idea from my fathers school:
If boys were caught fighting in the schoolyard, they we taken to the gym and put in the ring with gloves on and told to box it out.
By extension, put pairs of the people caught with knifes into a UFC cage and let them fight it out - the survivor gets to come out - would half the number of offenders overnight...
I gather this will be televised live on Sky Sports with opportunities to bet on the outcome?
In Marseille drug gangs stopped using knifes, they now use guns.
It is such a lucrative market.
As Johann Hari states "The War On Drugs creates a War for Drugs"
Currently reading his book: http://chasingthescream.com/
After watching this:
Highly recommended
I gather this will be televised live on Sky Sports with opportunities to bet on the outcome?
proceeds from the viewing rights go pay the losers funeral bills and the rest goes to the families of the original victims.
The families of the fighters get nothing as they should have done a better job raising their kids with decent values/morals.
I know that there are a lot of knives out there already, but a lot of knife crime seems to be carried out with 'kitchen' knives, most of which surely don't need to have a point on the end. Why not persuade the shops to introduce a range of 'kitchen' knives that are rounded at the end like a bread knife? Reduces the availability of 'stabbing' type knives maybe..........................
Yeah, slice them instead of stabbing them.
slice them instead of stabbing them.
As far as I am aware that is why football thugs carried stanley knives, they were prepared to slice somebody up a bit, but not actually stab and kill them..............
I'd ban all red tops from reporting news. Instead, they could print fake stories about stuff that doesn't happen. Might cause less damage.
In a perfect world, somehow hold politicians to election promises for the rest of their life, maybe try and remove some of the abysmal self interest and short term-ism of politicos.
Obviously the ultimate answer is a kind of Utopian society where everyone has fair chance at means to advance if they wish to, but that's the Star Trek future that is just not happening, ever, because we're all too busy being massive holes to each other.
I am now Home Sec (thanks for your support)
I’m done for the day, 2hrs in the orrifice here in Whafty Lofty Towers is enough for me to claim £6000 expenses so I’m just about to call down for my Jag chauffeur to take me home.. I’ll need my police escort obvz.. so you lot get out of my way I want to be home before Flog It comes in the television set.
Fnarrr, fnarrrrrr
Are pink uniforms going to work? Didn't the whole wearing your jeans below your derriere coming from emulating US prisons and them taking your belt away?
I think it is a simple solution in theory, start treating all young people like they are valued, and they will start to value themselves and those around them, instead they are left feeling like they are often stuck in a trap of poverty and made to feel they have little worth. Police and society, often are just left to deal with the aftermath as they don't have the funds to tackle the root cause.
I do not think these knife crime offenders have happy consistent families and want to be part of something. Maybe this could be tackled. I too was scared when I heard the recent deaths were not gang or drug related, just attacks for the hell of it on innocent young people.
Are pink uniforms going to work?
No, in the same way Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona achieved nothing by marching drug addicts through the streets in chains wearing placards identifying them as drug addicts.
Are pink uniforms going to work?
As long as Tory Law and Order policy is to keep the mail readers happy they will consider it has worked. Short of bringing back floggings and hangings there isn't much they could to to make the bitter revenge filled loons happier.
If you are caught with a knife ,it would be reasonable to assume there is an intent to use it. You get a custodial sentence. simple.
Yes we may be sending down people who are effectively guilty of nothing but carrying an offensive weapon but it would only take a few hundred to get sent down before these idiots get the message. You carry a knife you get a year in jail.
Where we would put all these people and what you would do to educate them is another question and no doubt would cost money. But there should be no price put on people's lives especially youngsters.
oh and while I'm at it , turn off all social media, it seems to contribute highly to inciting "arguments" and what people are going to do about it. so no Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, snapchat, YouTube until you're 30 yrs old. After witnessing two teenage girls on the tube going on about someone they were going to "slap up" because of a comment on some sort of media I dread to think what else is going on.
it would only take a few hundred to get sent down before these idiots get the message.
America imprisons millions for drug offenses, some relatively minor, yet drug use, abuse and associated crime increases
After witnessing two teenage girls on the tube going on about someone they were going to “slap up” because of
a comment on some sort of mediaShazza told Lisa what karen said about she did with Jezza. I dread to think what else is going on.
Sounds strangely like growing up before social media
Blimey! We've gone full Daily Telegraph
Where are all these new prisons and prison officers coming from then? And all the police for these stop and searches
On the day that a report is published showing how short prison sentences don't actually work, and if anything are counter productive, as they cut peoples ties with their communities, further alienating them from mainstream society, but providing no opportunity for education or rehabilitation.
We need to address the symptoms, and thats not facebook. Its poverty, gross inequality, lack of opportunity and arcane ineffective drug laws (amongst many, many other things)
And this government has not the slightest intention of addressing any of those issues. Basically, the sum total of **** all is going to be done about this, other than 'The Saj' crossing his fingers and hoping nobody nice and middle class gets caught up in the underclass all killing each other (which he couldn't give a toss about)
If you are caught with a knife ,it would be reasonable to assume there is an intent to use it.
To cut cheese/fruit/missed that its a locking blade on the multitool you have in your camelbak and so on.
To cut cheese/fruit/missed that its a locking blade on the multitool you have in your camelbak and so on.
I think he must have meant have a knife and look like wrong un. They are easy to spot.
Is it cos they is black?
There was a matey on the radio this morning. By his accent I would say he was from "South London" if you "narmean". He was saying that the gangs are not about drugs. Drugs fund their lifestyle but the gangs are about territory (postcodes), "beef" and all sorts of perceived slights where nobody can remember where it all started. I was surprised in that I assumed that drugs were what drove it all, but he was adamant. Radio 4, Today programme this morning, towards the end of the programme. You can listen again.
The pink jump suit idea would, as several people have pointed out, simply make them the "jeans round your arse" of this country.
Nico. I heard that interview and there was some pretty severe cognitive dissonance going on there. If you're involved with a turf war which you maintain is not about drugs, but you then go on to say that, yes, you do supply drugs, and yes, drugs do fund your lifestyle, then its about drugs