The Mayor of London, a man whose activities I take a close interest in, will be visiting the City Academy tomorrow (Thursday) evening to preside at the latest of his "community conversations" about youth violence. The idea is to solicit views from the public on how to tackle the problem. If you wish to attend and possibly submit a question in advance, you should either complete this booking form or telephone 020 7983 4100. You can hear recordings of previous events of this type that took place in Brent, Croydon and Waltham Forest here.
Some of the claims Boris makes about progress in dealing with crime in general and youth violence in particular should be treated with caution. Responding to a glut of teenage stabbings, one of his first acts on becoming Mayor in 2008 was to get the Met to step up stop-and-search and introduce knife arches at transport hubs. He now claims to have taken 11,000 knives "off the streets." Yet any relationship between the amount of stop-and-search and the incidence of knife crime is hard to determine, as an expert analysis of this has clearly shown. Note too that his most recent boasts about his crime policies do not include knife crime, an omission that might not be unrelated to recent highly-publicised fatal stabbings of and by young people in various parts of London.
That said, I believe his desire to do something positive about this deeply troubling issue is sincere and it's good that the Conservative Mayor is visiting Hackney, which is of course a Labour stronghold. I don't think I'll be attending, but would love to hear from anyone who does.
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