UPF Youth: Knife and Gun Crime

Policemen sharing:  The gun crime was reduced in UK thanks to the cameras  introduced after 2006. That's why the numbers show how this type of crime went  down in the following years. So now we mostly talk of knife crime.

Police tried to influence the gungs by providing support if they cooperate, but use  suppressing measures if they don't. But it didn't work, because they didn't trust  the police.

In addition, if the problems were regarded as racial, made it also difficult to bring  resolution.  Yet, having a policemen in each school, where kids could see him as a  human being and talk to, proved very helpful.

Young people are tempted to go in gangs because of financial incentives. We try  to help them, so they don't need to go into that temptation.

Comment: If social structure is top-down, all the money for solution go to the top  level. But the most important is the moral education when kids are young. If they  learn to live in the vicious circle where they deal with each other in a bad manner,  the violence increases. But if they learn to live doing good for each other, that  increases others doing good for them. So which of this two circles they want to  live in? 

Action:

Approaching 10 thousand signatures on our petition on Knife and gun crime.   Once we reach it, the government will have to react.

More funding for youth services, rather than empower control.

Barriers:

Brocken families, poverty, lack of environment of trust, love and support, pushing   them to find false self esteem in gungs. The moral grounds of family, education  and religion are lost. Poverty brings parents to have 2 jobs. Children left with  wrong influence, spending too much time playing violent games, while having less  meaningful social relationships.

Lack of education. Lack of purpose. Poverty - search of fast money, that jobs do  not provide.

Presenter women:

What can we do as community?

Women presenter 2: She put knife crime as a disease, where symptoms were present before the problem to occurred. They were visible in the family, the community and the economic structure.

The areas of high and low knife crime show the factors forming this problem. Love and belonging… "We cannot self actualize".

UPF Peace Council