London: Mayor & More

At Guardian Comment: Boris & Youth Crime

The site has had a major overhaul. My piece for it today begins as follows:

On London's streets no teenage boy is free. His eyes are peeled, he keeps his head down and his senses ever alert to the danger of intimidation, assault or worse. His female counterparts too have grown more wary. Even if they've never been hurt or harmed or have heard of statistics showing they're unlikely to be, the young are nervous of streets they should be able to walk in tranquility. Some have greater cause for fear than others, not least those young males inhabiting the very twilight worlds from which the worst horrors flow.But all shudder at the muggings and killings of other boys their age, as do all who live in their neighbourhoods. Dangerous youths have always stalked big cities, their reputations casting long shadows. But has their influence ever been more grimly corrosive than it is in the capital today?

One month into his mayoralty Boris Johnson has been busy being seen to be honouring campaign pledges to break this spell. Coming from a Conservative, his remedies have had a novel quality. At first they recalled the old, ignorant self-gratifying Tory "tough talk". Gradually, though, Johnson sketched in the other side of his policies: he was conscious that far more had to be done to divert those drawn to criminality down other paths; he displayed an intellectual grasp of why gang membership might offer security and a form of kinship unavailable elsewhere. Johnson's argument that Ken Livingstone was out of touch with ordinary Londoners' concerns could be persuasive when he addressed this theme. Now that he's won, we await delivery.

Now read on.

Youth Crime: Prevention & Cures

When I wrote about the launch of Operation Blunt 2, an "in your face" police tactic launched with Mayor Johnson's encouragement in an attempt to tackle knife crime, I accepted its political expediency but expressed doubts that it would produce great results. A reader called Rob took me to task: "This post smacks of a need to be seen to be Saying Something, when simply reporting the Met's new crackdown...would have done fine on its own."

Maybe he had a point. Let me clarify. I think there's something to be said for demonstrations of intent and accept that there may too be something to be said for an "in your face" stop-and-search strategy, if it's "intelligence-led", to use Brian Paddick's term. But I can't see this as anything more than a small part of the solution to a social problem with deep and tangled roots. In this, I find I'm in agreement with Shaun Bailey, the Tory PPC for Hammersmith.

On last Sunday's Politics Show - which you can still watch it again - he said he thought Johnson was right to "send a message" about crime and ASB, but warned that much more would be required especially among the young: "To suggest to people that we're going to take charge is very important." He went on to emphasise prevention: "At the end of the day the amount of crime a society suffers from is not affected much by the police...the people who get involved are not scared of the police." Which is sort of what I was driving at, Rob. We'll have to see what difference Ray Lewis and others can make. Plenty, I hope.