Call for new agency to tackle crime

A
multi-agency forum should be established to tackle the causes of
youth crime, chairperson of the Metropolitan Police Authority Lord
Toby Harris urged last week

Harris
told a London conference on education and youth crime that there
had been a 40 per cent increase in violent street crime over the
past year, with the number of young people involved in street crime
rising by 57 per cent. Some 65 per cent of people accused of street
crime were aged between 10 and 17 years old.

Urging
professionals to focus on early interventions, Harris warned: “We
must try to intervene long, long before the antisocial behaviour
order and tagging is used by looking for the causes and using all
the resources available to identify the problems and the
individuals most likely to become offenders.” Harris, also Labour
leader of the Greater London Authority, said the Metropolitan
Police had had success with the Safer Streets Campaign, which
diverted officers away from traffic to tackling gun and street
crime.

But he
said this was only a short-term solution: “The long-term answer is
not to rob one area of policing to supplement another, but to work
together – all of us – but particularly police, education and
social services to tackle the causes of youth offending.”