Panel Voices – MALTE LAUB
LET’S TALK: Police are the wrong agency
Trust an academic based at King’s College London to come up with a daft idea. Or is it? Police are the wrong agency …
Malte delivered these thoughts at the final Forum of 2019. They contain important food for thought – for all of us.
“It’s not about where you come from; it’s about where you’re going”
Sherifa talks about how mentoring can help with low self-esteem and lack of confidence which may stem from being born on an estate. She talks about how a change of [...]
Sherifa talks on mentoring parents
Sherifa talks about the kind of work she is inolved with helping families and mentoring parents to better cope with their circumstances (34s)
Professionalism, Values and Society
Sherifa talks about how although we have ready access to many kinds of health professionals, from psychotherapists, criminologists and social workers, our society is continually on the brink of crisis, [...]
Let’s Talk – Origins and Purpose
Chris Haydon talks about the origins of CTVT and the 'Let's Talk' project. The Let't Talk project began after a spike in Knife crime in London, and an event was [...]
Media Focus on the Negatives
Black people are often portrayed in a negative light by media who want them to conform to stereotypes. Gang members, stabbings, drugs and violence. But this is something that most [...]
Young People from Elevated Minds Training Police Recruits
Elevated Minds is an organisation that works with young people who are at risk of becoming vulnerable through being excluded from school, or who are regularly absent from school. It [...]
Audio Bites: No Black Female Role Models in the Media
A young black lady feels there is a lack of role models for young black females to look up to
Audio Bites: Negative Impressions of the Police
A young black lady has never had any dealings with the police but feels intimidated by them because of the negative experiences felt by friends and relatives.
Racism and Islamophobia
A boy from Walworth Academy talks about what it is like to be on the receiving end of islamophobia. And how he feels about seeing other people being picked on [...]
Stop & Search Desensitising Us
A young person at Walworth Academny talks about when you see something happen too often...
Bobbi on Racial Prejudice
Bobbi, a white female from Bermondsey, talks about how she sees black people treated differently to white people in her own experience.
3 Visions for Tomorrow – ‘Solutions-Focused Mentoring’
In one of a series of highlights taken from our programme, 'Three Visions for Tomorrow', Sherifa talks about the need for what she calls 'Solutions-Based Mentoring.
James Waddington QC
I find it encouraging that knife crime is in the news. Whenever this happens, the likelihood of some change taking place dramatically increases.
History
The issue of knife crime has been in and out of the news for 55 years. Therefore, I was frustrated to hear talk in 2019 of demonising an entire generation. This is divisive and wrong. It is divisive because, cloaked in purported good intentions and glib words, it seeks to set one part of society against another. It is wrong because it has always been well known to be the case that a relatively few young people are responsible for the worst incidents. I see a lot of them. I represented them in the 1980s and 1990s. I have tried them since 2004. It is also wrong because media coverage, in highlighting the problem, dramatically increases the chances of something being done about it. This is exactly what has happened over the years.
The Prevention of Crime Act 1953 was enacted in the light of press concern about teddy boys. The topic has been in and out of the news like many other criminal behaviours ever since. Parliament has reacted by way of new legislation or increased sentences when this happens. After similar concern in the 1980s, there was the Criminal Justice Act 1988 which created offences of having a bladed article in public and also on school premises. After a period of austerity in the 1990s which like today had an impact on resources, during the 2000s, more resources were applied to policing and youth policy. In 2018, after very serious economic retrenchment, mandatory sentences of at least 6 months were introduced for second time knife offenders. The press is currently very interested in knife crime which is a serious problem. But, it is not the first time that it has been a serious problem. Probably the single biggest reason for the recent increase in murders is a lack of police presence.
There needs to be a bigger police presence on the streets with the minimum of intrusion into people’s private lives. All crime tends to go down when there are more police on the streets.
The Police need to continue to improve their relationship with the community. The police say that more work is being done on this at their end. They need to be more sensitive and also do more active work in the community. I think less stop and search is a good idea as I don’t think it is a very effective tool and it is very intrusive.
What people have to say…
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