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BBC News
18-06-2025
- BBC News
Serious crime involving children increases in London, report finds
An increasing proportion of children aged between 10 and 14 years old are suspected of committing violent crime in London, in comparison to other young people, a report has to Met Police figures, 7,512 children aged between 10 and 14 were suspected of violent crime, including knife offences, in 2023, a rise of 38% from this is below the 2019 figure, the report highlighted that those aged 10-14 made up a higher percentage of serious offences involving young people in 2023, compared to Peck, director of London's Violence Reduction Unit (VRU), which commissioned the study, described the findings as "disturbing". The VRU was set up by London mayor Sadiq Khan in 2019 to try to tackle the underlying causes of study, put together by crime and justice specialists Crest Advisory, analysed data between 2019 and 2023 to examine the impact and background of crime in London, and provide recommendations on how to respond to it. The figures show that serious offences affecting under 25-year-olds initially fell during the pandemic, but increased in the years 2019, there were 56,734 serious offences involving those aged 24 and under, falling to 37,616 in 2021 and rising to 41,147 by in 2019, children aged 10-14 were involved in 15.9% of those offences, this had risen to 18.3% in comparison, for those aged 15-18 the proportion fell from 47.8% in 2019 to 43.5% in 2023, and for 19-25s it rose from 36.3% to 38.3% in the same time period. Ms Peck said the report highlighted the importance of the VRU's work aimed at tackling school absences and exclusions, which were found to be key risk factors in children becoming involved in study said the number of permanent exclusions in inner London had fallen over five years, while increasing nationally, but the number of suspensions had increased across both inner and outer London. It also said that young people with special educational needs were disproportionately represented in the youth justice 2023, the VRU launched a three year, £3m project involving 70 primary schools across seven boroughs, offering targeted support to improve children's language and communication skills. "It really directly helps support young people to address things like conflict by using words not fists," Ms Peck said. Manda George, head teacher of Torridon primary in Catford, south-east London, said her school had used the funding to expand its support for children with speech language and communication needs through oracy lessons, as well as teaching children about relationships and conflict resolution. She said teachers were still seeing the impact of the pandemic, which has left an increasing number of young children struggling with language skills."We can see straight away in nursery if a child needs something extra in terms of language and communication, and similarly a child with being able to talk about their emotions, or how they're feeling, as opposed to hitting out or lashing out."Now in the second year of the programme, Ms George said the school had seen a huge improvement in behaviour. "If children are able to resolve that conflict before they get angry, before they get upset, then it doesn't escalate to a point where we are having to intervene with things like suspensions and exclusions." Sai Satyadeva, Torridon primary school's inclusion leader, said it was easy for children to become "lost or labelled" in secondary school and then disengage. She said since the expansion of the oracy programme pupils were "better able to advocate for themselves" and were showing improvements in their behaviour and forming better relationships with their peers. When we visited the school, some of the older children were discussing a book they'd been reading, using a technique called Rally Robin, which Ms Satyadeva explained encouraged them to take turns, without one person dominating the children picked up from each other using phrases such as "I would like to build on" or "I would like to challenge" the ideas put forward by their classmates. Ten-year-old Ashton said it gave them the ability to disagree with each other "but not in a rude way. We don't say, you're not correct, or shout out". He told me his friends now used a similar technique in the playground to decide which games to play."If one person says how they feel, then the other person says how they feel, then you can figure out a way to resolve the argument," added his classmate, Madison, aged 10. Eleven-year-old Isla said she liked this as it helped her to "see the other people's point of view"."If you're in a large disagreement, we don't want it to get really physical" explained 10-year-old Ethan. "We talk about our feelings." Ms Peck insisted the results within the schools the VRU had been working with had been "remarkable". "Ninety-six percent of young people who have got involved in these type of lessons narrowed the gap between their peers, and 81% narrowed it by more then 50%," she it will be some time before it's possible to evaluate whether such a programme can help lower the number of young people being stabbed on London's streets. The report points out that, as the VRU was only created five years ago, it is difficult to measure how successful its public health approach has been, while the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic had made it "difficult to see key trends in crime data". "I think we do have to acknowledge that last year, for the first time, we had the lowest level of murders for under 25 [year olds] for 23 years," Ms Peck said, when asked about the figures in the she added that it "doesn't breed any complacency."It's something Londoners are concerned about, absolutely rightly so, and we see far too may young people get caught up in violence." The report also recommended that the VRU should commission research into the exposure of children to online harm, including social media, as well as harmful relationships with peers and follows the release of hit Netflix series Adolescence earlier this year which sparked a national conversation about the impact of social media on young people."It's important that we understand what is going on the virtual space and how that relates to physical violence," said Ms Peck. The Metropolitan Police commissioner has repeatedly warned that knife crime could rise in London without more funding from the government, although following last week's Spending Review, the chancellor said she was confident that pledges on cutting crime and increasing police numbers can be kept."Everybody wants to feel safer," Ms Peck said, when asked if she was concerned about Sir Mark Rowley's comments. "What we need to be doing is really investing in that prevention that stops young people getting engaged [in crime] and being exploited in the first place." But won't some people be sceptical about the link between funding oracy programmes for young children and preventing a young teenager from picking up a knife? "I can appreciate that," said Ms Peck, "but it's entirely logical. We know the safest place for children is in school."One of the key factors of a young person being excluded, or being suspended, is very often because they're unable to articulate themselves very well, and that turns into bad behaviour." Head teacher Manda George told me she can "absolutely" see the link between supporting speech and language skills for very young children and preventing older ones becoming involved in violence. "The earlier we can support children the better. By the time they're in secondary school it's too late."
The National
18-02-2025
- Politics
- The National
Counter extremism leader warns of Gaza radicalisation
Live updates: Follow the latest on Israel-Gaza The West's response to the war in Gaza has caused a degree of anger that will inevitably lead to a rise in radicalisation among young Muslims, the UK's leading counter-extremism expert has warned. Dame Sara Khan told The National she had never known such hostility from Muslims, outraged that the western democracies they have embraced appear to have taken the rule of law 'with a pinch of salt' when it comes to the more than 48,000 Palestinians killed in the conflict. Israel's actions in Gaza, which countries such as the US, UK and Germany have failed to suppress, are 'going to have a consequence', she said. She said middle-class Muslims, such as her banker and lawyer friends, were incensed at 'how cheap Palestinian life seems to be' in the eyes of the West. 'In the case of Palestinian lives, these laws and rules don't seem to matter,' the UK's former commissioner for countering extremism said. This was deeply worrying for the majority of Britain's four million Muslims, she said. 'It's something new, I've really never seen that level of anger.' She said it was breeding "disillusionment' in western democracy and predicted it would cause 'a whole load of societal problems that are going to come down the pipeline very soon'. She is concerned for the younger generation who have seen the grim images from Gaza. 'This is a reality we will have to deal with in the next couple of years.' The UK is not prepared for that reality, she argued. Ms Khan was appointed the UK's first counter-extremism commissioner in 2018, carrying out a series of reports assessing the threat of extremism, and strategies and legislation to combat it. In 2021 she became the Independent Adviser for Social Cohesion and Resilience, publishing the Khan Review on how to build resilience against extremism. She held the posts until December last year. "The government doesn't even have a counter-extremism strategy and hasn't had one for four years,' she said. 'My last review also showed the lack of any strategic approach to protect and promote social cohesion.' That lack of vision alarms her due to the rise in extreme ideas and policies that have become so commonplace that they are now almost acceptable, she said. 'Some things that were first confined to the fringes are now much more mainstream. That accelerating and evolving extremism landscape is something the UK government, and I suspect a lot of other governments, are not really addressing because there's so much focus on terrorism.' Ms Khan, a senior adviser for Crest Advisory, a crime and justice specialist firm, accuses authorities of not paying enough attention to extremist organisations who fall just below the threshold to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation yet promote the same ideology. 'They're in effect allowed to operate with impunity, even though they are radicalising people,' she warned. "I did a review of the law four years ago with Sir Mark Rowley [now Metropolitan Police Commissioner], where we evidenced gaps in legislation which allowed extremists to operate freely. The government has still not closed this loophole." Among her concerns were Islamist extremist groups promoting 'the war on Islam conspiracy theory'. This flourished during the coronavirus pandemic, which she said 'without a doubt unleashed a whole wave of support for conspiracy theories'. The growing acceptance of such theories and disinformation was leading to an 'accelerated societal threat landscape' where trust and confidence in the police, media, government and the law was ebbing away. When that happens, 'people will then start looking towards authoritarian or alternative voices', she said, which has arguably already occurred in several European countries with the rise of the far right. Many of those right-wing parties – in Germany, Austria, Hungary and the Netherlands – are built on anti-immigrant messages predominantly and unashamedly against Muslims. The misinformation and distrust also contributed to the anti-immigration riots in Britain last summer, largely sparked on social media, particularly by far-right influencers. "Within hours these individuals spread the false claim that the Southport murderer was an illegal immigrant and Muslim, neither of which was true. Yet disturbingly, people were prepared to believe this – why? This demonstrates how, for some, the perception of Muslims is inherently negative." Even worse, she points out, is how recent YouGov polling shows that incorrect information has flourished. In August 2024, 11 per cent believed the killer of three girls in Southport was a Muslim despite it emerging he was from a Christian background. In January that figure rose to 24 per cent, demonstrating the dangerous nature of disinformation and conspiracy theories. "Truth becomes meaningless," she said. In her recent paper, labelled The New Extremism Landscape, the counter-extremism expert highlighted the growing numbers of believers of more outrageous ideas. For example, while 4 per cent of those who consumed news through traditional media believed in the Great Replacement Theory, which incorrectly states there is a plot for Muslims to replace Europeans through mass migration, that rose to 55 per cent for those who obtained their news from Telegram. As a mother of two teenage girls and a toddler, like many modern parents Ms Khan worries about the deeply corrosive element of social media. The problem, which she accuses the British government and other western states of not taking it seriously enough, is the damaging effect of malign online information, she said. 'Social media has been pivotal in spreading these conspiracy theories, and the speed and the scale in being able to reach people in a way that is just so toxic is unprecedented,' she said. 'It contributes to the erosion and undermining of democratic rights and that erosion of social cohesion certainly contributes to hate crime, and this erosion of social cohesion is exploited by extremists of all persuasions.' Ms Khan, who was made Dame of the British Empire (DBE) in 2022 for services to counter-extremism, argued that disinformation contributes to 'polarising societies and feeding division' and has in part led to the UK's 'chronic democratic decline'. While Ms Khan, who co-wrote The Battle for British Islam: Reclaiming Muslim Identity from Extremism, accepted there was legitimate debate to be had on immigration, she warned it was 'imperative on our politicians to talk about in a way that isn't using inflammatory, divisive language'. She lamented, too, that for a subsection of the British population, 'no matter how much' Muslims contribute to public life 'some will always view Muslims through a suspicious lens'. She said 'you can either flee and live in fear, or you can stand up and fight', which is a sentiment she urges her children to follow. 'Stand up, push back and fight for your equal rights as a British citizen of this country and our democracy.'
