You might not guess it from reading the papers, but crime has fallen dramatically in Hackney. Offences are down by nearly a third in three years, the fastest drop for any London borough. The introduction of safer neighbourhoods teams in every ward, plus close working between Hackney council and the local police, has seen substantial reductions in burglary, car crime and street robbery.
However, violent crime amongst young people is bucking this downward trend, not just in Hackney but across London. It seems that not a week goes by without a teenager being murdered on London’s streets. Often the media – sometimes accurately, sometimes not – point to the growing issue of gang culture.
A recent article in the Sun described a pleasant residential part of Hackney as a place where ‘feral teenagers armed with knives and guns roam the streets at night, shooting and stabbing each other.’ This is not a picture I recognise. Many of Hackney’s young people are an outstanding success story. GSCE results in our borough have improved by 73% in five years, and with five brand new secondary schools, are set to improve even further. Working with our partners in the NHS, we have seen record falls in teenage pregnancy, and groundbreaking early intervention programmes are helping both parents and young children to break negative behaviour patterns and improve their life chances.
The majority of Hackney’s young people are succeeding in life, but for some of them it is against tough odds. Violent and gang-related incidents directly involve only a tiny percentage of our young people, but every one of them is affected, whether by the backlash of negative stereotyping, or by an increased fear for their own safety. Knife crime in particular is self perpetuating. Young people repeatedly tell police that they carry knives to ‘protect’ themselves, yet few of them have a real understanding of the consequences, and how easily a single stab wound can kill. A small but nonetheless unacceptable minority find out the hard way.
I welcome the prime minister’s commitment to young people, and the extra funding he has promised for youth activities. In Hackney we have already made significant extra investment in these services, and there is no doubt that by providing positive and relevant activities for young people, we as councils must play a part in the solution to some of these problems. However, the kind of violence we are seeing on the streets of the capital, and the growth of gang culture, cannot be eradicated simply by ‘giving them something else to do’.
This is a problem that society finds hard to debate intelligently. The pendulum tends to swing between crass demonisation of young people on the one hand and helpless hand wringing on the other. Both stances are equally short on answers. We are told by young people that they join gangs because they give them a place to belong and to feel protected, and because the gang leaders give them something to aspire to. It is this poverty of aspiration that we as Labour politicians need to tackle with renewed vigour. In places like Hackney, where an increasingly socially divisive housing market threatens to polarise our communities, the real cohesion challenge is socioeconomic rather than cultural. While young people feel excluded from the growing prosperity of this city, gang culture will continue to flourish. It is not enough to provide more youth clubs. The only way this cycle can be broken is for the minority of marginalised young people to see a positive future for themselves in which they can believe.
This is a job not just for politicians and the police, but for schools, employers, faith groups, communities, and most importantly for families and parents. A Labour government and Labour councils must continue to give those families the support that they need to achieve this.