Done in error

Brought this topic up in a group chat I'm in (with people around late 20s to mid 30s, black and white, from the London area) and the general consensus is, they don't disagree with stop & search per se and it should be employed in "hot areas", but in it's current or recent guise, it's flawed (1 in 100 searches find a knife), geared towards black youth and isn't really a deterrant. "Black of black" crime figures are overstated but I'll get into that another time when I have been sent the links I've been promised, that back that up.

The issue with stop & search stems primarily from the fact that grown men can and do carry knives, not just the "youth" and those in gangs etc don't frequent hotspots for searches, like train stations etc and are more likely to carry when they're actually going to use. Another issue is that if someone caught with one, they're likely not going to be punished proportionately and will just go back home and get another knife/weapon.

The youth of today are so f***ed up now, that they think they have to carry a knife to protect themselves, things aren't settled with a good old punch up any more and are so desensitised towards seeing their friends murdered, that until they see it in the flesh, it won't affect them enough to change their ways.

They're also not scared of prison at all, our prison and justice system is weak compared to other countries, for example the US. A man in the US can get 25/life for 3 menial offences and that's their life over. Not even touching the appeal of crime to urban youths, vs a decent, honest living.

We need more police on the streets, we need military on the streets. It's not an easily solved topic, but our Mayor needs to do better.

In the majority of cases, the kids who are carrying the knives are already on the social services/police radar and a high percentage of those being murdered also (there are innocent bystanders getting caught up in this).

The Glasgow model involves profiling these kids in advance as being of higher risk and then subjecting them to random stop and search on sight, along with other interventions by interested parties. The more this happens, the more the kids think twice about going out with a weapon.

That is the point of it. Stop and search needs to go through the roof. There needs to be a genuine fear amongst young people that they will get pulled over and there will be some cop going through their pockets every time they go out.

The ONLY measure of success is a decline in the numbers of murders. That is it.

Hey CP are you going for a record on duplicate posts?