Can Boris Johnson really cut violent crime by 20 per cent? James reported recently that the Prime Minister has set his Cabinet this target, and is demanding that every department get involved in realising it.
Most people have focused on the most salient political problem, which is knife crime. But if the Prime Minister is really serious about driving the overall violent crime statistics down, then he already has a piece of ‘oven-ready’ legislation which could help him do this – if he’s prepared to spend a bit more money on it. The Domestic Abuse Bill is returning to Parliament very soon, after just making it through all the prorogation jamboree in the autumn. Domestic abuse is a crime that often involves a great deal of repeated violence, including homicide, with two women a week dying at the hands of a current or former partner. Campaigners often describe it as ‘domestic terrorism’, and compare the amount of attention paid to domestic homicides with the response to the far smaller number of terrorism-related deaths.
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