Dave Raval

As I write, I am trapped in the middle of a crime scene, as someone has just been shot and killed by the bus stop near my house, on Amhurst Road near the corner with Marcon Place. Details are currently unclear but it appears that a bullet has been found two doors down from where I live. This is only a few hundred metres from the fatal stabbing of Jahmal Mason-Blair three months ago . My condolences go out to the family of the victim, for what will most likely turn out to be another tragic and pointless waste of a young life.

In fact, this is the second time recently I have found myself inside the cordon of police ‘Keep out’ tape – only last month I was in Hoxton when I heard two gunshots by Shaftesbury Street, and within minutes found the place swamped by police and ambulances. It turned out that this had been a drive-by shooting, though that time no one died.

Gun and knife crime are big problems today, and the sort of thing that gives Hackney, and many other places, a bad reputation. The police are not to blame, in fact in Hackney they have adopted innovative new practices, such as Operation Kerb and bringing together several local agencies to profile potential young offenders and trying to deal with them before things get too bad.

But the problem is that, as a nation, we are leaving things too late, the police have to mop up the mess, whilst victims’ families and local residents have to suffer. But people very rarely kill as their first crime. And people who do kill are almost always known to the police or other government agencies for something they’ve done beforehand. We need to stop people, especially young people, getting to the point where they are prepared to kill.

How can this be done? Not by concentrating on headline-grabbing gimmicks like minimum sentences for carrying knives and guns, army-style youth offender institutes, or having yet more ASBOs – these only treat the problems, not provide a cure. Prison is not a deterrent either – we imprison more people than any other European country, yet violent crime is rising.

What is needed is a long term approach to preventing crime, to dealing with things much earlier on. Things like:

• Providing better-resourced social care to children of 5,6 and 7 who come from troubled homes and need support; there’s no point waiting until they are 13 in a gang and carry a weapon
• Taking children who have been excluded from school and providing establishments where they can continue in education – otherwise they spend their time on the street and fall into crime
• Genuinely providing more things to do for youngsters, like sports clubs, youth clubs, etc
• Using ex-offenders to talk to and mentor youngsters in trouble, because these are more respected than some other role models
• Providing properly-funded community payback schemes for minor crime, rather than sending people to prison where they learn techniques for more advanced crime
• ‘Restorative justice’ – bringing offenders face-to-face with the people who they have mugged or whose houses they have burgled (so long as the victim agrees of course). This works because many criminals don’t realise the pain they cause and it has been shown that, if you quite literally shame them into realising this early enough in their criminal life, before they are too de-sensitised, re-offending rates drop. It helps the victim get over the incident, too.
• And the list goes on.. (you can see more details here ).

There is also a lot of evidence that income inequality, which in this country has soared under Labour, leads to a great increase in crime, for both rich and poor alike.

Now, none of this gets headlines in the paper. None of it will work particularly quickly either. Some people will criticise extra money being spent on people like this. But I am convinced that only this will work in the long term – everything else is just a sticking plaster.

I intend living in Hackney for many many years, but I don’t want to be stuck inside a police cordon every month. So that’s why I pledge, if elected as an MP, I will do everything I can to take the steps necessary to make a real difference to crime, and not to let it soar as it has done for decades under the Tories and Labour, who have only been addressing the symptoms, not the causes.