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Gang warfare in London has taken an even uglier turn: our report today shows that increasing numbers of children are being caught up in turf wars.
Doctors report treating children as young as 13 for gunshot wounds; previously victims would have been in their late teens or twenties. The numbers are not large — 588 people were treated in hospital for gun injuries in the past five years, including 42 children under the age of 16 — but the very fact that young boys are being targeted in this way is a worrying trend. Further, lower-level gun crime is on the increase, with a total of 831 offences since April.
This is matter for real concern. For the past 11 years, police have been addressing the problem of rising gun crime through Operation Trident, though the focus has since shifted to the parallel and related problem of knife crime which also, overwhelmingly, affects black communities.
But the Met needs also to address the simple issue of police visibility on problem estates; some of the problems of gang violence can be contained through a consistent, interventionist police presence in the most dangerous neighbourhoods.
However, as campaigners such as Camila Batmanghelidjh of Kids Company point out, many of the underlying problems lie with absent fathers in the families of gang members. It is an issue that the Government has never fully addressed; the Conservatives have now begun to do so. Decent schools are the next best recourse for potential gang members: where necessary, they should be single-sex if that helps address underachievement.
The Mayor has tried to help provide alternative activities for young people in deprived communities through, for instance, the provision of Saturday boxing clubs; other charitable initiatives do heroic work. But they need greater support. If children are being shot as gang members, it is a scandal we cannot ignore.
Torture questions
Torture degrades those who take part in it as well as its victims; it also degrades the countries that sanction it. The shameful allegation made against Britain is that we may have colluded in the use of torture on terror suspects carried out abroad.
Sir John Scarlett, the head of MI6, has declared that the intelligence services are committed to human rights. This may be so. It does not, however, answer allegations relating to so-called “extraordinary rendition” or about MI5 involvement in some cases of alleged torture. Neither does the article this weekend by two Cabinet ministers, Alan Johnson and David Miliband.
The ministers are right to say that there can be no guarantees regarding the treatment of detainees abroad. Britain is in no position to turn down information from countries such as Pakistan or Algeria that may have a bearing on our security and may have been derived by means we would not sanction here. But the most serious allegations relate to more direct involvement by Britain in problem cases.
The terror suspect Binyam Mohamed has claimed that MI5 agents were in Morocco when he was tortured in that country and were involved in his interrogation in Pakistan. It is not good enough to say that the US will simply stop providing us with security information if we reveal the extent of what has happened.
We do ourselves no favours by abjectly acceding to every activity sanctioned by the US in pursuit of terrorists; the special relationship has its limits.
Growing our own
The Government wants us to become more self-sufficient in producing food: scandalously, we grow only half of the vegetables and 10 per cent of fruit that we eat. London can play its part.
Rosie Boycott is leading the Mayor's campaign to exploit London's green spaces for productive use and allotments are in huge demand. In a recession it feels right to do more to grow our own: it helps us and it helps the country.
Reader views (1)
One way to disperse the gangmembers might be to stop brigading them in sink estates which means the same sink school and the same sink, no hope life.
Stop giving comfortable houses free to the feckless babymothers who breed them and persue relentlessly he even omore feckless fathers for child support. Unfortunately these are now so many of this ilk the country cannot enforce its own laws and to attempt such dispersal would likely infect decent areas with high crime levels.
- Jonmac, Sevenoaks, 11/08/2009 22:22
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