Tag Archives: knife-crime

Live by the sword…

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For years now, politicians of all flavours have been busy manipulating public opinion and cherry picking how they present information – all with the aim of convincing the largely apathetic voting public to agree with their crackpot ideas. As you can imagine, however, this has its own share of problems.

As an example, today on the BBC Radio 1 news show (*), there was a terrible indictment of just how mixed up people are. Basically, the Prime Minster Gordon Brown is trying to gain some media-credits with his claims that he is “tackling knife crime.” Obviously the PM and current government are unpopular at the moment so here we see yet another example of how politicians no longer have a political view, but will do what ever they think they can to get support from the barely coherent, rabid, tabloid media.

The knife crime panic is a great example of this. All year, we have been subjected to scare stories in the media about how knife crime is on the increase; if you believe papers such as the Daily Mail there are more stabbings than there are people. I am not for one second trying to imply that knife crime isn’t devastating for the victims and their families – but we need some form of perspective. While there were pockets of increased incidents, the chances of Joe Blogs UK becoming a victim was pretty much the same as it always has been.

However, our media-hungry politicians (on all sides) read the building tabloid-frenzy and jumped in early. For months we had debates about how bad knife crime was, and what were the government going to do about it. This was stoked with the public being drip fed “news” each time a cute, innocent kid got stabbed. Each one was delivered in that wonderful way the tabloids have of making their readers think that the one incident they report is just the tip of the iceberg – in reality, when things are so commonplace, the media loses interest in them… Seeing a great chance, the government (and opposition) built upon the general irrationality of people – isolated incidents were blown out of proportion, personal anecdote was given much greater emphasis etc. So far, so typical. This is all politicians have done for over a decade.

Today, the PM tried to deliver his latest great accomplishment.

The PM announced that the new “crackdowns” implemented by Police in high-risk areas had managed to bring down knife crime. Wonderful. I am sure he expected nothing but fanfare… Sadly, the general public are too depressed and gloom-laden to take good news like this. Also, for years we have been indoctrinated into the idea that out microcosm of life is more representative of society than anything else – which means no matter what the PM claims, people think things are getting worse. From the BBC Pages:

The Prime Minister has spoken to Newsbeat after the government said the latest police crackdown was working.

The government says stabbings are down and fewer teenagers are carrying blades in the 10 parts of England and Wales where there’s been a big effort to tackle the problem.

The figures also show under-18s going to hospital for stabs and cuts are down by a quarter and more serious attacks have dropped by a fifth.

Great news. It doesn’t really say much about the government policies though. Nothing like enough time has passed to know if this is a long term change or a simple “blip”  in the numbers. Equally, there is no way of knowing if the “massive” (**) increase was a statistical blip. The information provided doesn’t tell us if the crime has simply moved elsewhere, or if this is part of a national downturn in knife crime. It really is a non-news item. There isn’t enough information for the viewer to do anything but rely on how the sparse numbers are spun to the public.

Shocking, but this is how the government have wanted us to interact with news for many a year now. If the public were given all the information that drove national policy, half the crazy things we suffer now would never have survived.

Equally comical, is how Gordon Brown reacted to the predictable nonsense questions. According to the BBC, the text messages from their listeners saying things like “I was stabbed 2 years ago, how has knife crime gone down” were a valid counterpoint to the governments figures. A normal, sane, educated person would have laughed and said “shut up crazy fool.” But this is gold to politicians – they want people to think like this so that future crazy laws can be passed. This lead to a very bizarre exchange:

Newsbeat: The statistics on knife crime say one thing. We’re hearing other things from our listeners.
Gordon Brown: That’s why we want to get knives off the street. I’m not complacent at all. A lot of young people are stopping carrying knives but we’ve got a long way to go. And that’s why today you’ve got all these people from all different walks of life; sports people, from the world of entertainment, from radio, from television, all saying, working with the community groups, no to knives. (blah… blah… blah…)

A touch strange. The PM is saying nothing as an actual response. It is certified 100% content free. Isn’t that nice. That was just mildly odd but it was followed by this:

Newsbeat: The stats that you’ve published today seem to show that knife crime is down. A nurse at Bristol Royal Infirmary says stab wound admissions are going up.
Gordon Brown: What I want to know is how we can actually get knife crime down and how we can make sure it stays down. Making sure it stays down is more policing that’s visible on the streets, a presumption to prosecute if you’re seen to be carrying a knife, tougher police and prison sentences when that happens, shops banned from selling knives to young people and schools and community groups doing an educational process whereby young people are discouraged from carrying knives.

What? Listen to it on the radio. Newsbeat phrase their statement as a question. You can hear the question in the reporters voice. She is expecting an answer. Granted she seems unable to actually ask questions, and just makes statements with a rising emphasis at the end to imply a question, but if you speak English you can hear the questioning tone.  However, our glorious PM ignores it. It is really like he has been asked a different question and Newsbeat dubbed their own over the top of it. Nothing he says bares any relation to the question.

Bizarre.

Are we really in such a disconnected world that any of this makes sense? Do politicians think this is acceptable? Do reporters? (He wasn’t challenged on it).

Equally sad, but much more common, is the idea that the experiences of a nurse at the Bristol Royal has such an insight into national trends that their comments outweigh national reports. Even if they are the person who records every admission (and the cause) they have no idea what is going on in Liverpool, Barnsley, Truro, Southampton (etc.). The national statistics are based on reporting from various sources and show the national trend. Knife crime can go down 90% nationally but still show an increase in a region. That an otherwise well educated nurse doesn’t understand this element of statistics gives me concern over how disease surveillance is carried out.

The BBC mentions the “crime hotspots” that were targeted, and show a reduction:

The 10 knife crime hotspots are London, Essex, Lancashire, West Yorkshire, Merseyside, the West Midlands, Greater Manchester, Nottinghamshire, South Wales and Thames Valley.

Unless the Bristol Royal has moved across the River Severn  into Wales, it is not in that list. It could show a trillion percent increase and the governments figures for the crime hotspots would still be down. This nurse’s experiences may be 100%, but they are irrelevant. The only way this person could have had real impact was if the debate was about knife-crime admissions to the Bristol Royal Infirmary. But it wasn’t.

Still, in this day and age of citizen journalism, no one was going to say this. The nurse’s (and others) comments were treated as valid counterpoints to the report and dutifully skipped around by the PM. Are the BBC’s news reporters really so empty that this seemed reasonable?

Sadly the answer seems to be “yes.” Well done Great Britain, I am so proud.

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(*) Please note, this is a link to the current newsbeat page – the actual content I am talking about here may have gone by the time you read this. If you can, though, this is worth listening to. Its almost like they re-recorded the PM and asked him different questions…

(**) For an arbitrary value of massive.

Knives out

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Grim numbers of stabbings have recently dominated the UK news. The popular press are baying for action. Increasingly hostage to the demands of the Daily Mail, the government is taking this to mean any action whatsoever, no matter how pointless or counter-productive.

A couple of days ago, there was a decision to take young people “at risk of being involved in knife crime” (a bit difficult to identify, surely…) to visit stab victims in hospitals. This made some sort of sense. Seeing the consequences of a stabbing might indeed put a few non-psychopathic people off contemplating carrying knives. Although it could possibly be a bit unnerving for victims. However, within a couple of days, this idea has come to be seen as too much of “a soft option” and the government denies it even contemplated it.

Targetting problem families is the new favoured solution. Targetting how?

More than 110,000 “problem families” with disruptive youngsters will be targeted as part of a crackdown on knife crime, Gordon Brown has said.
They will get parenting supervision, with the worst 20,000 families facing eviction if they do not respond. (from the BBC)

Duh? Run that by me again.   Where do these numbers come from? Made up on the spot,  like 42 days, 300 active terror networks and all the other bullshit numbers?

110,000 problem families

Firstly, what is a “family?” A whole kinship group, the nuclear family, any co-residents in a property? There’s no room for sociological niceties in this policy. However, without even a working definition of what counts as a “family”, the whole approach becomes hot air.

The UK government, under the pressure of the baying press, has been deifying the “family” for a few years, to the point that now well nigh all policies are presented as “family” policies.  Which is odd given that a huge minority of people don’t live in “family” groups.

Even the government now seems to acknowledge that there may be sometimes be a dark side to its cosy “family” ideal. We all know there are whole families that any sane person will move to the next county to avoid.  But still.

How are these bad “problem families” going to be identified? Are they families in which everyone commits crimes? We have laws that are supposed to bring penalties if you get caught. There is an old-fashioned idea of presumption of innocence surely.  Are they “families” overwhelmed by poverty, illness and mental problems?  Even the shittiest family grouping is hardly responsible if one of its number goes and stabs someone.

Are they going to be the sort of families who spends their lives under social services supervision, with the kids in and out of care? The forms of intervention don’t seem to be effective yet, do they? Maybe some serious action to help ease the misery of the kids involved might be more effective than heaping even more pressures on them.

The worst 20,000 facing eviction?

  • Well, this assumes that ALL problem families live in council accommodation. A bit odd (a) for the party that was once identified with the labour movement; (b) when public housing is becoming almost non-existent and (c) when any successful criminal “families” are more than likely to own their own property.
  • It assumes that some scale of “worst” can be applied. Again, this can’t involve actual engagement in crime otherwise the perpetrators should surely just be arrested and charged in the traditional manner. So what will it come down to?
  • It puts a bizarre numerical value on the numbers of people judged “worst” and due to be evicted. Will there be targets? Will numbers of problem families be shared out equally between local authorities? In that case, playing football in the street might get you seen as a problem in some Surrey suburbs, whereas you might need to engage in a random arson campaign before you disturb teh neighbours in some Glasgow streets.
  • Even imagining for one moment that these twenty thousand “families” are the genuine causes of all crimes, what about the children and adults in these families who are blameless? Are the innocent now to be punished for other people’s criminality?
  • Can someone – anyone – please explain to me how making 20,000 families homeless will cut knife crime?
  • Is there evidence that homelessness works wonders for child development? Are the homeless uniquely moral?

Hint to Gordon Brown – yet again. (Please start paying attention, Prime Minister…..)

Mad social policies that pretend to be “tough” but – in fact, show an incapacity to use simple logic and usually involve hammering the poor – aren’t going to win you the election. The hangers and floggers Tories in the Daily Mail readership are just not going to vote for you, no matter how much you pander to them. And it makes the rest of us despair.