How far into the depths of authoritarianism are we prepared to descend in order to ensure our streets are safe? Even a decade ago such a question would have been or seemed ridiculous; not anymore. Analysis of many public attitudes 2025 does not make for comfortable reading. Opportunistic street crime including shop theft can affect anyone and everyone. There can hardly be a single person who is unaware of a friend, relative or colleague who has been a victim of or witness to such everyday events.
Woke influencers and journalists alongside self seeking politicians sought to diminish the frequency of stop and search for knives irrespective of the facts that the large cohort of those searched and their victims was black youths or young people. In this House of Commons table I would point out that the ethnicity of offenders and victims is omitted. That would seem to be deliberate policy; overlook that the king "is in the altogether" i.e. has no clothes and the public will be mollified by the naked scandal in its midst.
Between 2019/20 and 2021/22, a third of black homicide victims were aged 20 or younger. This compares to 13% of white victims and 25% of victims from the other ethnic groups. At 31/03/2023 there were 24.5 stop and searches for every 1,000 black people and 5.9 for every 1,000 white people. A comprehensive analysis of stop and search encounters is available here.
There are a thousand and one opinions and statistics on knife crime. And there are many who manipulate fact, figures and fiction to promote their own point of view as a basis of what should be done to reduce or even eliminate this awful aspect of our society. Their shrills will become louder up to 2029. Let us hope that reason can prevail for the sakes of the offenders as well as their victims so that my opening sentence is irrelevant.
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