Amber Rudd: We will get tough on knife crime

Amber Rudd said ‘early intervention’ would be the focus of a new strategy for curbing violence that she will unveil in the coming weeks.

She added that the best long-term solution to the problem involved ‘engaging’ with young people and providing ‘incentives’ that would prevent them from being drawn into crime.

But she also emphasised the importance of tougher enforcement – including stop-and-search and new laws to make it harder to obtain knives.

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The Home Secretary has criticised Labour for opposing strict legislation aimed at locking up repeat offenders caught carrying a knife, and also said the issue was about more than police resources.

There have been 21 stabbings in the Black Country and Staffordshire since the turn of the year, while over the same period five murders have involved knives.

Ms Rudd said that each knife death was ‘an absolute disaster and tragedy’, but said it was more important to help ‘communities engage more with their young people’ and to use ‘early intervention’ to encourage youngsters to make better choices.

“We know that young people are increasingly carrying knives and I want to find out why that is and what we can do to turn them away from that,” she said.

“We need a different approach in terms of incentives for them, engaging with them, and the old systems don’t always work. Resources have their part, but the really interesting way to approach it is to get in early on intervention, to be bold about what are we doing wrong, what are we doing right, and to invest more in what we are doing right."

Violence

She continued: “The core of the serious violence strategy that we are bringing forward is making sure we do more at the early stage with young people to stop them picking up knives in the first place.

“I’m very struck when we have a knife death, and every one is a terrible tragedy, that you often have the parents of a family that have lost somebody, they don’t tend to say it’s about police resources. They say it’s about the communities needing to engage more with their young people, making them aware they have choices and encouraging them not to carry knives.”

“It’s about making sure young people have choices – about realising that they can make a way in life and not just flop back on the negative. Turning lives around and making people feel valued is exactly how you are going to get them to make those good choices.

“That is not only a good investment for the individual, it’s also a good investment for society and for the economy because that person will have a fruitful life.”

Ms Rudd also appealed for support from the Labour leadership on legislation, including new laws to stop the online sales of knives to juveniles, and criticised the lack of backing for some previous measures.

She said: “The picture also has to be about legislation so that we put the right powers in place. Some of the legislation, if you are caught carrying a knife twice you are going to be sent away, Jeremy Corbyn opposed.

“I’d like to feel in being tough on crime we are going to get Labour’s support, but you never know.”

The Home Secretary also reiterated her ‘100 per cent support’ for ‘properly done’ stop-and-search.