‘The Green Party focuses on giving young people positive alternatives to the desperation and lack of hope  many of them now experience.’

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

Kim Arrowsmith is the Green Party candidate for Dagenham and Rainham.

Young people should be safe on our streets.  As a society, we should be able to offer our young people the kind of hope, support and mentoring that provides an alternative to a life that is driven by fear and hopelessness. Other political parties will tell you that there are simple solutions available for young people affected by knife violence: more stop and search; harsher penalties for those carrying weapons; more prison places. What they will not tell you is that these approaches have been tried. And they do not work. 

The Green Party wants to take a different approach, one that focuses on giving young people positive alternatives to the desperation and lack of hope  many of them now experience. In order to achieve this, we need much more investment in services aimed at children and young people. These have faced huge cuts in funding in recent years: in London alone, youth services have been cut by 50% in the last 10 years. Neither the Conservatives or Labour are committed to fully restoring those lost and reduced services. The Green Party is. Our policies around increasing the minimum wage, rent controls and investing in the services young people need will all help them to feel that there is a safe and affordable future on offer for them. Youth clubs. mentoring services and safe spaces for young people to express themselves also have an important role in guiding young people along positive, non-violent paths.

 Our young people need to feel heard. Often, when these issues are discussed, they are the last people to be consulted about how we can tackle the issues they face on the streets and in their daily lives. We need to find out what they need and what they see as the solutions to the issues they face.  The Green Party advocates a democracy where young people have more say. Youth assemblies are one way to do this. To fail to do this is to fail our children and to risk repeating the failed policies of the past. 

One area that needs addressing urgently is the relationship between our police forces and young people. Due to the behaviour of some of our police officers and the institutional sexism and decades and decades of racism that has been exposed in recent years in, for example, the Met, there is now widespread distrust of the police. Young people, who often experience fear in their daily lives, feel they cannot approach a police officer with their concerns. Trust has broken down. The police will need retraining and the recruitment process improved in order to start to break down these barriers and establish a healthier and more open relationship between the police and young people. Youth assemblies could also play a role in developing a dialogue between young people and the police. 

 Better youth services; a future that seems affordable and attainable; a police service that is open and trustworthy. These are the solutions to the issues on our streets. The Green Party is the only party offering these solutions. For real hope and real change, vote Green.

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