Taking another look at austerity would yield better results in knife crime than stop and search

The new powers, requested by the police and backed by home secretary Sajid Javid, were not easy for May to approve. One of her signature policies at the Home Office was to curb stop and search

What might the UK be talking about if it were not consumed by Brexit? The word “crisis” is overused, though not in the case of the turmoil surrounding leaving the EU. It is also a fair description of the horrific rise in stabbings on our streets, which would surely have received much more attention from our politicians and media in a non-Brexit era.

Not before time, the government is now addressing knife crime. It will be easier for police in England and Wales to use stop and search powers under section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, under which for a limited period in a given area people can be searched to prevent violent crime. Inspectors, rather than more senior officers, will be able to authorise this tactic in seven regions accounting for more than 60 per cent of knife crime – London, the West Midlands, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and South Wales.

The move, requested by the police and backed by home secretary Sajid Javid, was not easy for Theresa May to approve. One of her signature policies in six years at the Home Office was to curb the use of stop and search. Her motivation was good: black people are nine times more likely to be targeted than white people. The total number stopped and searched fell from a peak of more than 1.5 million in 2008-09 to 277,000 in 2017-18.

Some academics doubt that stop and search reduces violent crime. They worry that the police’s new rights will prove counterproductive, as they could alienate the black community at the very moment when the police need their trust and cooperation. Clearly, stop and search operations should be intelligence-led, and used sparingly, fairly and sensitively.

The police cannot arrest their way out of the problem, as acknowledged by Metropolitan Police commissioner Cressida Dick. She has also rejected Ms May’s suggestion that there was no correlation between the violence on our streets and the loss of 20,000 police officers since 2010. While the cuts might not have caused the upsurge, they have probably reduced the police’s ability to tackle it, as the Home Office’s own research concedes.

Similarly, while the rise in knife attacks cannot be attributed to the reduction in stop and search, the curtailed powers might well have hampered the police response to it. Greater use of stop and search will hopefully deter people from carrying knives. But it should not be seen as a panacea, and must form part of a much wider cross-government effort.

This penny appears to be dropping. Ms May will chair a Downing Street summit on serious youth violence on Monday, amid signs that ministers are attracted by the groundbreaking “public health” approach across all agencies, including hospitals and schools, which enabled Glasgow to shed its reputation as the murder capital of Europe. The motto of the city’s Violence Reduction Unit set up in 2005 was that “violence is preventable, not inevitable”.

A more joined-up approach would enable an early warning system and interventions to steer young people away from the wrong track. But the government will need to back up headline-grabbing announcements with hard cash. The £100m to help combat knife crime announced by Philip Hammond in his Spring Statement was a drop in the ocean; police budgets have been shaved by £2.7bn since 2010.

Austerity also undermines the fight against violent crime in less visible ways. Devolving the cuts to local authorities, whose central government grants have been cut by 49 per cent, left no money for vital projects such as youth clubs. Programmes such as the early years wellbeing initiative Sure Start have been pared back. The government should reverse these cuts and make it harder for schools to exclude pupils, amid suspicions that this is often done to boost their exam results. Greater investment is needed in those who are expelled, to reduce their chances of ending up in a gang.

To paraphrase Tony Blair, while politicians still talk tough about crime, they have stopped being tough on its causes. That needs to change urgently.