What to do?

With the knife crime epidemic (?) continuing a pace, it's difficult to think of any sort of quick fix solution. Brown, Johnson et el seem to be empty of any positive recommendations and I have heard little new from the community leaders.

The editorial opinion pieces of most national and local papers echo the short fused, shallow thinking of a lot of middle Englanders. Hang 'em high...Deport the immigrants...Leave 'em in school til they're 35...National Service.

Channel 4 has been running a season on yoof crime this week of which I only caught the first days offering. The cameras followed groups of teenagers from 4 different places around the country, asking questions about why they carried weapons etc and what they felt day to day on "the street." The most amusing thing for me was all the "kids" they were interviewing were from poverty stricken, sink estates, looking like less tidy Iraqs, however their environment and their parents weren't really mentioned.

I may not be an expert, but surely there must be some correlation to nature v nurture. If your parents/parent gives not a thought to your welfare or well-being, or your parents act with less responsibility than my two year old, surely society can not expect a sizable minority of these children to turn out as violent,damaged, desperate individuals. Add in peer pressure, cheap alcohol, skunk (cannabis, but not as the politicians remember it from Ox-Bridge) we are creating an apocalyptical menu from which it will be difficult to recover. So, what to do?

Firstly we have to deal in facts, reason and evidence. The sobbing, anguished faces of grieving relatives will always attract the media and this will continue to be a force for good and bad. However, we cannot demonize children on the one hand and molly-coddle them on the other. The teenagers you see on the street are 99.99999% the ordinary, slightly sullen type of child that you were, we all were only cough-some-cough years ago.

The empty, dead eyed killers that we see from police crime pictures are the minority and certainly not the norm (forget what you read in the The Daily Hate). The first step on this difficult road must be engagement with the small band of scared, directionless, pre-killers. How? I feel that this should be through high profile community engagement programmes. If you are not in employment, training or education from leaving school to the age of 21, you will be placed in your community undertaking projects which benefit your neighbourhood, your community and society. This can be anything from building work, care, cleaning etc. Councils are comprised of various departments that could provide the places for these teenagers to be placed in. At the age of 21 the necessary skills should have been learnt enough to start them on a responsible pathway, becoming valued members of society.

But...What will Browm, Cameron do?...We'll see, but it had better be quick.