Is it time to admit that the argument against stop & search is now lost?

Kunjufu · (#1 (**permalink**))

MELANIE PHILLIPS: The dangerously deluded children's tsar and the truth about knife crime | Mail Online

With the reality sinking in that knife and Gun Crime is now a UK youth problem gone mad and NOT the BLACK problem that we had been led to believe.... is it time to admit that STOP & SEARCH will almost certainly return before long..and any arguements about its discrimination against Blacks is weaken by every new murder on our streets..

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The belief that prison only makes things worse means that few are ever locked up. Only one knife offender in 17 is jailed; many aren't even brought before the courts, but are let off with a warning or a caution.

A senior member of the judiciary, Sir Igor Judge, has said knife crime has to be 'confronted and stopped' by severe sentences for possession of knives.

Yet Sentencing Council guidelines say that the 'starting point' for those caught with knives should be a community order.

But such community penalties result in an even worse rate of re- offending than prison sentences - and without the relief given to beleaguered communities while offenders are actually taken off the streets.

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The Home Secretary is pleading with parents to persuade their children not to carry knives. But since the problem is often a chronic failure of parental control, this is worse than feeble.

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He would like to criminalise parents who smack their children, claims that Britain has moved on from an era of ' authoritarianism' when 'you did what you were told', and has called on the police to ' understand' young people better.

Supporting the notion that children should not do what they are told, and thus undermining parental authority, he perfectly represents the view that has wrought havoc with young people's development for the past four decades - that children should tell adults what to do.

Far from safeguarding children's 'rights', Sir Al embodies the infantilisation of the adult world which, through its irresponsibility, has left our young people racketing around in a wilderness with no boundaries and no compass.

The overwhelming cause of their wild behaviour is the collapse of family life. The violence of their rage and grief at their abandonment by (in the main) their fathers plays out in the violence they mete out to others.

The catastrophic breakdown of parenting, emotional chaos and absence of love and care in their disorderly homes increasingly results in aggression as their instinctive response to the slightest setback.

Such children desperately need the strongest possible supporting structures of boundaries, discipline and order to keep them from falling apart. But instead, the adult world at every level - from parents to teachers, social workers, police, the courts and politicians - has knocked those supports away.

Drink-related crime is now out of control, thanks to the liberalisation of alcohol laws. Drug policy has given young people the most mixed of signals, while the failure to control drug trafficking has flooded the market with dangerous drugs and fuelled an explosion in drug-related crime.

Kunjufu · (#2 (**permalink**))

Stabbed actor's family fury at Children's Commissioner over knife crime

By James Slack
Last updated at 12:02 AM on 26th May 2008

The family of Rob Knox last night led a wave of attacks on the Children's Commissioner over his stance on knife crime.

Sir Al Aynsley Green said increased use of police stop and search powers to catch knife thugs would 'antagonise' young people.

His remarks, in a pre-recorded BBC interview, were broadcast hours after 18-year-old Rob's death.

Under fire: Sir Al

They were seized on by Rob's uncle John Knox. Rather than 'treat them nicely', Mr Knox said, those caught carrying knives should be sent to jail. He added: 'Don't mollycoddle them, if they want to get that type of action going, bang them up, bang them up for five years.'

Rob's mother Sally added: 'I can't understand personally the people who are against stop and search. Why think you're upsetting someone by stopping and searching them? You'd never say I'm not stopping someone from drinking and driving.'

Tory MP Philip Davies said children were the majority of victims of knife violence and the commissioner should be 'standing up for the interests of law-abiding young people, not criminals'.

Ian Levy, whose 16-year-old son Robert was stabbed to death in 2004, said: 'Stopping and searching has led to preventing deaths and injury. I wish someone had stopped and searched the young lad who killed my son.'

Police also appeared unhappy with the comments.

Metropolitan Deputy Assistant Commissioner Rose Fitzpatrick said robust stop and search operations were not aimed at victimising young people - 'it's aimed at keeping them safe'.

MarcusGarveyLives · (#3 (**permalink**))

What did Melanie Phillips have to say about this?

LadyDay · (#4 (**permalink**))

unless stop and search targets all groups equally than the arguments against will stand. from what i read with this harry potter guy the perprator was a known thief and possibly known to the police.

stop and search or stop and harrass

whenever I am in London i only see one type of people being stopped and search which my uncle pointed out too. young black males. I have yet to see such tactics used on any other races so fiercly.

youth crime is a uk problem

Anna Mary · (#5 (**permalink**))

If it means one less life will be saved, there is there is no choice. There has to be a zero tolerance policy by way of stop and search. Youth deaths by stabbing is rising. 28 have died this year so far.

manwiththemirror · (#6 (**permalink**))

anyone who claims stop and search powers will somehow curb youth violence is completely deluded.

mike pain · (#7 (**permalink**))

depending on what news channel you listen to, anything from 12 to 18 teenagers have been killed in greater london , in or around london, or nationwide ( which may or may not include wales, but excludes scotland )......

while i will admit that there is somewhat of a growing, mainly, knife-crime problem IN ( and Lets say for the sake of argument) -CENTRAL LONDON, there does seem to be a bit of hysteria whenever 24 news channels report this. this is due in part becuse the problem is not quantified.....

news channels don't say for instance that women are still more likely to be killed by a spouse than by a teenager wielding a knife or a gun.

new born babies are still more likely to be killed by distraught mothers than by being killed by knife weilding teenagers...

and if you are a teenager you are just as likely to be killed or injured by a car on londons streets than by a kife or gun.

or the fact that whichever statistic you read there is less crime than there has ever been ( people seem to quickly forget knife wielding teddy boys, skin heads and football hooligans)

....many of the weapons used by teenagers are mainly from the kitchen ( cake knifes etcc...)

stop and search doesn't work because the problem that keeps kids carrying knifes was caused by a long term problem and only long solutions will help not short sharp stop and search which has a hit and miss rate of mostly miss

Agu Bu Oji · (#8 (**permalink**))

Can only put so much pressure on people before they snap, think the debt people are carrying out there is just too much... things fall apart.

MarcusGarveyLives · (#9 (**permalink**))

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anna Mary

If it means one less life will be saved, there is there is no choice. There has to be a zero tolerance policy by way of stop and search. Youth deaths by stabbing is rising. 28 have died this year so far.

Greetings

What is your opinion of the 'stop and search' tactics described in this thread? (which you may not have read as you are new to the Village) (click for more).