News from Labour Matters

Editorial: “Punishment, enforcement and prevention” planned on knife crime

The Prime Minister today spent much of his monthly press briefing outlining new measures to tackle knife crime. He did so in the knowledge that most of the journalists facing him represent newspapers who have already vilified the plans, and instead backed a simplistic mantra that nothing short of jailing anybody found with a knife in public was sufficient.

He will not be surprised if tomorrow’s headlines are unlikely to give his explanations much more than their usual derogatory response. If that is indeed the case, it would be a crying shame which would once again demonstrate the gulf between the media’s agenda and the government’s responsibility. It will no doubt be reported differently: as a gulf between the views of the government and voters’ views however. Keep your eye out for the use of the phrases “out of touch” or “out of step” for confirmation.

There is a risk that the media will manufacture Gordon Brown’s own “hug a hoodie” moment, but the Prime Minister is right to be resolute despite the risk of misrepresentation. Contrary to Nick Gibb, the Shadow Schools’ Secretary’s claims that “one does get the impression with this government, they are simply reacting to headlines,” it is clear that the opposite is true.

Backed by the media, the Conservatives are both reacting to headlines and playing to the gallery. It is superficially attractive to claim that the solution to knife (and gun) crime is to lock those carrying such weapons up, without fail and without addressing the consequences of doing so in the longer term, but Ed Balls nails it when he says that “politicians who say their judgement is better than judges’ are playing fast and loose with the liberal principles of our society.”

None of which will make life any easier for the government on this issue. A fully rounded policy involving what the PM called “punishment, enforcement and prevention” is the correct response, not the Daily Mail’s call for prison numbers to be tripled.

“If you carry a knife, our objective and determination is you will be caught, you will be prosecuted, you will be punished,” said the Prime Minister, yet you can be sure that tomorrow it will be the notion that some perpetrators will be forced to meet their victims; visit hospitals to see the results of knife crime; or to serve 300 hours community service; which will make the headlines. Even if the headlines don’t actually say “Labour soft on knife crime” that is sure to be the tone of many.

It is to the government’s credit that, even surely expecting this, they are pressing ahead with the more nuanced policies which are required to change attitudes to the carrying of knives. You do not make it “uncool to carry a knife” by threatening mandatory prison if caught, that path not only threatens to create a generation of hardened criminals in numbers we’ve not seen the like of before, but will also entrench rebellious attitudes leading to some believing that it’s even more cool to be ‘tooled-up’. High visibility community service however may very well make it uncool to carry a knife.

Enforcement too is required, and there is little alternative to increased use of stop and search and other detection measures, controversial as they are.

But it is the policies designed at prevention which may well be the most productive in the long term. Intervening in more than 110,000 “problem families” is unlikely to yield good headlines, but is certainly an imaginative response to a problem recognised by all as a cultural one.

Despite the media, not because of it, the government is getting on with doing what it is charged to do – tackling the problems facing the country. It is for Labour supporters in the coming months to get behind them and highlight the void at the heart of our opponent’s alternative proposals. Sadly, that means the newspapers as well as the Conservatives, but that is the battleground Labour and the government still must not shrink from.

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