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London is in the grip of a ‘street crime epidemic’, according to a report by the think-tank Policy Exchange.
It’s written by David Spencer, the think-tankโs Head of Crime & Justice who was previously a Detective Chief Inspector with the Metropolitan Police, and argues for a ‘tougher approach to crime and criminals’, such as ‘a surge in stop and search’. Among its recommendations, the report calls for the top 20 โhotspotsโ for knife crime in London to be ‘subject to an enhanced โzero-toleranceโ enforcement of the law through the deployment of police officers on patrol โ explicitly tasked to conduct very high-volumes of stop and searches’, besides permanent Live Facial Recognition (and, police ‘deployed to these locations at peak offending times to respond to offenders’ being identified by LFR). The highest hotspot for knife crime in the capital, in the vicinity of Oxford Circus and Regent Street, should have very large numbers of officers on patrol (at least 100 officers) during peak times, Spencer argues. he also singles out Westminster Bridge, Parliament Square, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square (pictured) and Leicester Square as ‘iconic sites’ for ‘visible and intensive’ policing, arguing that ‘increased stop and search correlates with reduced knife crime’.
As for how to combat knife crime, the report points to Essex Police’s high-visibility foot patrols in Southend-on-Sea hotspot areas, and contrasts such examples with a ‘disconnect between those in government and the reality of fighting crime’.
He states that the ‘explosion of knife crime in the capital over recent years reveals a clear failure of leadership at both a political and operational policing level’. As for mobile phone theft – and thieves may use knives to threaten victims – and what the authorities can do about it, the report says that ‘the Government should legislate to require Apple and Google to prevent stolen devices being able to connect with cloud services, as the Metropolitan Police has been requesting for over 18 months. This would enable mobile phones to be quickly rendered less useful and limit the criminal market for the devices.’
In brief
Spencer says: “Police chiefs have prioritised other issues while allowing the streets to be surrendered to criminals and thugs. Political leaders have sacrificed effective policing to ideological preferences.” While concentrating on London, ‘which accounts for a disproportionate share of knife crime’, he shows that knife crime in England and Wales ‘has risen sharply over the past decade’. He describes the Met’s performance as ‘pitiful โ with only one in 20 robberies and one in 170 theft person offences solved in 2024’.
Criminal justice
More generally on criminal justice, Spencer says: “The failure to adequately deal with the most prolific offenders presented before the courts is perhaps the gravest sign of the permissiveness with which the criminal justice system treats those most dedicated to committing crime.” He notes that the recent Independent Sentencing Review led by David Gauke and the Independent Review of the Criminal Courts led by Sir Brian Leveson looks like leading to even fewer sent to prison.
You can read Your Money or Your Life: sub-titled London’s Knife Crime, Robbery and Street Theft Epidemic at the Policy Exchange website: https://policyexchange.org.uk/publication/your-money-or-your-life/.
Photo by Mark Rowe: National Gallery, Trafalgar Square.
