February 2025: Eradicating knives vs changing lives
The national debate on knife crime ignites government policy, while the Met publishes its own charter of (in)action
Dear StopWatchers,
This shortest of months is somehow still incident packed, with news of a yet another crime and policing bill in the works – almost an annual event at this point – and a new stop and search charter from the Metropolitan police promising a bunch of things that the force should already be doing, but with a great deal of self-satisfaction. We’ve read it and we can’t find the pledge to no longer bring bogus claims of racially aggravated harassment to footballers seeking their help… do let us know you if come across it in your version.
Alternatively, you could check out StopWatch alumni Holly Bird’s brilliant take on what the Charter means to / for Londoners, which is probably not a lot, to be fair.
We hope you enjoy this edition.
Eradicating knives vs changing lives
The focus on knife crime in policy and media circles recently has given the first two months of this year the feel of an unofficial knife crime awareness season. In addition to the No More Red campaign, there have been policy announcements and even technological solutions suggested. However, most attention was drawn to actor Idris Elba’s BBC documentary, Our Knife Crime Crisis. Over an hour, the programme attempts to understand the underlying causes of this type of violence, whilst establishing some important truths that often get lost in discourse.
For example, the programme is quick to acknowledge that many young people carry knives as a form of self-defence: the first person interviewed explains how they started carrying a knife from age 12 because they were jumped. This, and the fact that ‘three quarters of teenagers who were victims of serious violence were also perpetrators of violence’ are crucial observations that must inform anti-harm measures beyond the question of how to ban bladed instruments.
However, the programme illuminates an unspoken tension between the two approaches to dealing with the problem: the desire of lawmakers to simply rid Britain’s streets of knives on the one hand, and the intentions of health and social care professionals to invest their efforts in trying to improve the material and psychological conditions of people involved in knife violence on the other.
As a result, Elba moves between both groups without ever being able to fully reconcile their differences. For example, the documentary points out the strong links between school exclusions and serious violence, and highlights the important trauma intervention work of organisations such as St Giles Trust in hospitals, meeting vulnerable young people at ‘a reachable moment’ in their lives.
But one is left wondering how much this feeds into lawmakers’ considerations when it is revealed that the previous ruling party in government cut youth services by nearly half between 2015 and 2024, whilst the current one places its crime legislation focus almost exclusively on the length and sharpness of knives.
This month, the government announced its ‘toughest crackdown yet’ on knife sales online, targeting vendors with increased sentences ‘for selling weapons to under 18s from 6 months to up to 2 years prison time’ (Home Office, 19 Feb). Meanwhile, the Met police see a solution to the supply side of the problem in the promises of modern tech. KnifeHunter, a system developed in collaboration with the Institute for People-Centred AI (centred how? As victims? Targets?), can ‘help police forces identify weapons and then trace their origins more quickly’ (University of Surrey, 13 Feb).
On the issue of possession of and intent to use knives, Elba’s documentary explains that of all weapons carried by young people, ‘less than 25% are kitchen knives’. But the latest homicide statistics (Office for National Statistics, 06 Feb) show that kitchen knives were involved in 41% (109) of the total number of recorded homicides by sharp instrument (262) in the year to 31 March 2024. The government’s response to this?
… in recognition of the broad array of knives – legal or banned – that are involved in knife attacks, a new offence of possessing an offensive weapon with intent for violence will be introduced in the Crime and Policing Bill which will come with a prison sentence of up to 4 years in prison. This means that no matter if the weapon in possession is legal or not, if there is intent to cause violence, it is a crime.
However well-intentioned, this policy highlights the aforementioned divide between lawmakers who want to eradicate knives from our streets and care workers who want to change lives. According to the former, a young person’s fate should rest upon the mercy of a police officer and a court judge and/or jury of their peers, whereas the latter wants to save them from this perilous fate in the first place, knowing how likely it can produce repeat offenders and perpetuate violent behaviour.
But asides from some funding for Violence Reduction Unit style initiatives – such as the Community Initiative to Reduce Violence in the West Midlands – lawmakers and enforcement seem less keen to support preventative solutions to knife violence, leaving it to the likes of former children’s commissioner for England Baroness Anne Longfield to remind us that ‘schools should not be turned into “fortresses” in response to knife crime (The Standard, 04 Feb), and police ethics advisor Montell Neufville to warn that tackling the issue of kitchen knives ‘is insufficient in tackling the broader and more complex issue of knife crime’ (London Daily News, 04 Feb).
And this is all before we come up against the intransigence of police chiefs who stick to the same simplistic narratives that have long been discredited by their own evidence. Take the words of Met police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley on the link between stop and search and serious violence at a recent Greater London Assembly Police Crime Committee meeting, for example (12 Feb).
When the country’s top police chief still believes that weapons searches deter possession (despite plenty of analysis and survey data to the contrary), assumes a stronger causal link between drugs and weapons possession than actually exists (thus implying officer-generated suspicion is acceptable), and makes a point of their officers potentially reminding someone who they’ve found nothing on that ‘they are not allowed to carry a weapon’, it is a huge impediment to the joined up multi-disciplinary approach we’re told is necessary to overcome this complex issue.
It’s a shame there’s no discussion between Sir Rowley and Idris Elba in the documentary about this, but an even bigger shame is Elba’s correct observation that the problem of knife violence is an indication of how our society has ‘failed young people’. By extension, solutions to the problem of knife violence mustn’t be allowed to lose sight of young people’s humanity. Otherwise we will continue to fail them.
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Other news
Appropriate adults: Sir Sadiq Khan has launched a new £5.4m service aimed at ensuring vulnerable adults are treated in a “fair and just manner” by the police in London. City Hall said the new service is designed to complement the Metropolitan police’s work to exit special measures, and to respond to Baroness Casey’s damning 2023 review, which found the force was suffering from institutional misogyny, racism and homophobia.
Geraldine Evans, director of Appropriate Adults UK (AAUK), said: ‘Our role as appropriate adults is essential in safeguarding the rights and wellbeing of vulnerable individuals. This partnership ensures they receive the necessary support to successfully navigate the complexities of the criminal justice system’ (The Standard, 03 Feb).
Open letter urges home secretary to maintain police accountability levels: A coalition of organisations supporting victims of police violence are urging the home secretary to reject changes proposed by the police which threaten to reduce the level of scrutiny faced by officers involved in deaths and serious incidents (INQUEST, 10 Feb).
INQUEST director Deborah Coles said: ‘This review is a cynical attempt to shield the police from accountability and protect them from the rule of law. Police do not have a license to kill.
Despite persistent claims from the police lobby that police officers face too much scrutiny, we know that in reality officers rarely face consequences for their criminality and wrongdoing.
Rather than undermining important legal protections without any clear evidence base, the focus should be on ending police violence and racism and ensuring the harms of policing stop.’
Read the full open letter here.
Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em: The Met’s top chief says policing has been ‘left in a hopeless position’ because of a high court judgment against the Met’s dismissal of an officer whose vetting clearance was removed on account of rape and other misconduct allegations (Police Professional, 11 Feb).
Sir Mark Rowley said it was ‘absurd’ that the force cannot lawfully sack officers who are ‘not fit to hold vetting’.
Our director told the London Spy:
The ruling exposes a loophole in defiance of Sir Rowley’s mission to root out the worst from his force, putting public safety in a precarious position. Significant cross-sections of the public scared of corrupt, overzealous, racist and sexist police officers remain defenceless while they await the proposed legislation to tighten vetting standards following the conclusion of the police accountability review.
As a result, no one knows which officers are fit to police and which are predators and thugs in disguise. The Met cannot credibly claim to keep Londoners safe while this is the case.
Project ADDER lacks bite: The impact evaluation of government project ADDER (addiction, diversion, disruption, enforcement and recovery) finds no evidence of impact on the volume of drug deaths or crime in funded areas from its intensive whole systems approach (WSA) to tackling drug use and its consequences. This may in part down to patchy implementation of diversion pathways. For example, there was no increase in community resolutions for drug possession in ADDER-funded areas, compared with non-funded comparator areas. But there was an increase in referrals of people from criminal justice to treatment in ADDER areas (it remains inconclusive whether this was down to the ADDER funding) (Home Office, 12 Feb).
Professor Alex Stevens provides a summary analysis here.
Complaints to police watchdog up: 85,458 complaints were made about the police in the 12 months to 31 March 2024, according to the latest Independent Office for Police Conduct figures (IOPC, 18 Feb) The complaints contained 151,539 allegations, the majority of which were over the delivery of duties and service (53%). The most common action resulting from complaints handled formally (under Schedule 3) was an explanation (57%), followed by no further action (30%).
There was also a 7% rise in the number of 2,136 complaints were made to the police watchdog, an increase of 7% on the previous period. In 32% of complaints that were not investigated, the complaint handling or outcome was not reasonable and proportionate. Similarly, in 33% of complaints that were investigated, the complaint handling or outcome was not reasonable and proportionate.
Racism is getting automated, say NGO: Amnesty International UK’s new report ‘Automated Racism – How police data and algorithms code discrimination into policing’ found that at least 33 police forces – including Greater Manchester Police – have used predictive profiling or risk prediction systems, of which 32 have used geographic crime prediction, profiling, or risk prediction tools, and 11 forces have used individual prediction, profiling, or risk prediction tools (ITV News Granada, 20 Feb).
This increasing reliance on these tech driven forms of policing is ‘supercharging racism’, claims chief executive Sacha Deshmukh:
‘The use of predictive policing tools violates human rights. The evidence that this technology keeps us safe just isn't there. The evidence that it violates our fundamental rights is clear as day.’
Another year, another crime bill: The government has introduced its long awaited new crime and policing bill to the House of Commons, in a bid to ‘take back our streets’ (Gov.uk, 25 Feb).
A raft of measures contained in the proposal include the power for police to search properties without a warrant for electronically geotagged items, a specific offence of assaulting a retail worker, the introduction of respect orders (under which people who regularly engage in antisocial behaviour could be jailed for up to two years), and the right for chief officers of police forces to appeal the result of misconduct boards to the Police Appeals Tribunal.
Massive ethnic disparities in Met strip searches of children: Police custody and pre-charge bail figures published by the Home Office found Black children people are overrepresented in police custody settings (Gov.uk, 27 Feb).
In total there were 901,758 detentions in custody in the year ending 31 March 2024, of which 62,019 (7%) were of children (aged 17 and under). Nearly one in ten (9%) of people in custody were of a Black ethnic background, excluding data from the Humberside police, compared with 4% of the population. While in custody, 75,173 strip searches took place, the equivalent of 8% of all detentions.
As a proportion of all detentions in custody, the ethnic group most likely to be strip searched were those from a Black or Black British background (13%), with an extraordinary discrepancy emerging between children of different ethnicities. Black children accounted for 20% of strip searches nationally, with the figure heavily skewed towards police activity in London. Despite representing 16% of the capital’s population, the Met strip searched more than twice as many Black children (365) in custody as white children (154) in the year to 31 March 2024.
Section 60 watch*
London
Peckham (07 Feb), Hackney (22 Feb)
Warwickshire
Rugby (18 Feb)
West Midlands
Whitmore Reans, Wolverhampton (03 Feb)
* This is not a comprehensive list
Stay safe,
StopWatch.