The Telegraph, September 1, Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP
As the appalling spate of gun murders in Liverpool has tragically shown, there is a sub-culture of violent crime in too many communities in towns and cities across the UK.
Such horrific criminality is nothing new, but the growing role of “street gangs” – willing to resort to shocking levels of violence – is. Run by adults, they use children as young as 10 to do much of their dirty work. Often drawn from dysfunctional homes, they are induced or coerced into the gangs, where they run drugs and weapons for the leadership.
Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that police forces are failing to get a grip on them. Indeed, the experience in Liverpool seems to be typical. It took an outcry over the killing of a nine-year-old girl for the police to launch a crackdown. But if you deal with gangs in this way, it just doesn’t work.
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