With more than fifty murders in London alone this year, crime is rising up the political agenda. Today, Amber Rudd unveiled the government’s much anticipated strategy for dealing with violent crime.
Rudd’s argument is that drugs is the ‘biggest driver’ of this spike in violent crime. This strategy concentrates on what can be done to try and halt this drugs trading, and particularly the use of children as drug mules. There’s £11 million extra for early interventions designed to stop this happening and more money to try and tackle how the drugs trade is moving out from the big cities.
But the main political controversies are over whether the fall in police numbers and the decline in stop and search have contributed to the rise in violent crime. Labour, having had success with this argument in the election, are claiming that the reduction in police numbers because of funding cuts under the coalition have contributed to this spike, something which Rudd hotly denies.
Labour’s line of argument has been bolstered by a leaked Home Office document which talks about how the fall in the number of officers has likely been a contributory factor to the rise in crime. There is, though, an interesting question as to why directly elected Police & Crime Commissioners haven’t led to more of the high visibility, community policing that the public wants.
The stop and search debate is particularly controversial in the Tory party because of Theresa May’s criticisms of the police’s use of it; remember the recent Cabinet awkwardness on the subject. Amber Rudd is attempting a third way position on this, arguing that police body cameras mean people can now be more confident that this tactic is being used sensibly. But with the current spike in violent crime, it is hard not to think that the police need to make greater use of their Section 60 powers.
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