Evening Standard comment: The case for tougher laws on knife crime

As the Frontline London campaign has emphasised, we need a change of culture and better education of those young people in the gangs’ orbit. We owe that to London’s victims of knife crime and their families
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Londoners' concern over knife crime is underlined by a poll for this paper today showing strong support for tough new laws. Under the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill, now before the House of Lords, anyone convicted twice of offences involving a knife — including possession — would face a mandatory jail term. The Conservatives and Labour have backed the measure. The Liberal Democrats oppose it on the grounds that such decisions should be left up to judges. But eight out of 10 Londoners surveyed back the new laws or think they should be even tougher.

Knife crime remains a significant problem. So far this year in London 31 people have been stabbed to death, six of them teenagers, though overall the number of knife murders has fallen in recent years. Knife crime is endemic in the gangs highlighted by this paper’s Frontline London campaign. Whether mandatory sentences will deter young people especially from carrying knives is less certain. Mandatory jail sentences for firearms possession, introduced more than a decade ago, do seem to have had an impact on criminals’ readiness to carry guns. But getting a gun requires more premeditation for a teenager than picking up a household knife.

Automatic sentences should indeed send a message, as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner has argued. At present in London, just seven per cent of under-18s convicted of knife possession receive custodial sentences. But tougher sentencing alone will not solve the problem. As the Frontline London campaign has emphasised, we also need a change of culture and better education of those young people in the gangs’ orbit. We owe that to London’s victims of knife crime and their families.

Ending Iraq’s horror

President Obama’s authorisation of US air strikes against Islamic State (IS) fighters in Iraq could prove a watershed. The US has now made drops of humanitarian supplies to Yazidi refugees driven into open country by IS (as the Isis jihadist army has renamed itself) and facing starvation. But air strikes against IS are likely to prove necessary too. Since its lightning gains in Iraq and Syria in June, IS has busied itself terrorising the population of the areas it now controls, above all Shia Muslims and the Christian and Yazidi religious minorities.

IS’s capture this week of Iraq’s biggest Christian town, Qaraqosh, is alarming. The group’s tactics, including beheadings and crucifixions, have been deemed too violent even by al Qaeda. The decision to launch air strikes will have to be made on the basis of whether genocide is imminent: President Obama last night invoked that risk. Though the grim results of Western inaction in Rwanda and Bosnia hang heavy, the President failed to launch direct military action in either Syria or Libya, where in 2011 the threat of reprisals by Gaddafi’s forces in Benghazi prompted British and French intervention. This time the threat really does seem unambiguous: IS makes no effort to hide its savage intent against clearly defined, geographically isolated minorities. Air strikes inevitably raise the risk of greater Western military involvement. But the urgency of the case for action now seems clear.

Lightning Bolt

Usain Bolt has been out in London again demonstrating his love of clubbing: last night he left Mahiki for Raffles at 3.15am, accompanied by female friends. The Jamaican sprinter may be the world’s fastest man in short bursts, as the 100- and 200-metre record-holder. But he evidently has remarkable stamina for the long haul too.

Usain Bolt enjoys party night out in London

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