‘Address factors such as socio economic background, early childhood experiences and drug addiction when tackling knife crime’.

Today, we continue our feature on knife crime where we have asked Prospective Parliamentary Candidates across Havering to share their views.

David Hughes is the Romford candidate for the Green Party.

Rather than continually dealing with the effects of knife crime the factors such as 
financial deprivation, socio-economic background, early childhood and adolescent experiences of violence, drug addiction and low educational attainment have to be addressed. 

Of course we were well on the way 15 or so years ago with Sure Start which was scrapped by the Tories and in the last 10 years 133 out of 299 youth centres have closed along with devastating cuts to all youth related services.

It’s cold comfort to the families of a loved one if the perpetrator of a murder victim or maiming is in prison. Rather than retribution and an ever increasing prison population we need to invest in facilities for the groups most at risk to offer hope and opportunity. And where a prison sentence is deemed necessary education and training must be offered to further facilitate rehabilitation.

It is absolutely imperative that the Tory (and Lib Dem don’t forget in collation with Cameron) cuts are reversed with dedicated youth workers allocated to schools as well as youth centres. The cost will, in the main, be covered by savings on prison sentences where each inmate costs £50,000, savings to the NHS and more importantly saving so much grief and misery.

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