Evening Standard Comment: Dismantling London’s gang networks cannot come soon enough

Jeremy Selwyn
WEST END FINAL

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It has long been a familiar refrain of politicians and police to blame London’s criminal gangs for much of the depressing violence which continues to claim so many young lives in the capital.

So the admission by policing minister Kit Malthouse in an interview with this newspaper — in which says he has been “amazed” to find that the gangs responsible for today’s mayhem are the same ones that existed a decade when he was at City Hall overseeing the Met on behalf of Boris Johnson — raises troubling questions.

The most obvious is why, when the problem is so clear and so much police effort goes into tackling violence, has more not been done to break up these gangs and to stop them “backfilling” with new recruits when others are jailed or reformed?

Malthouse, who refreshingly accepts some culpability himself, says one answer is to destroy the “business model” of illicit activity, notably from drugs, from which crime follows.

Reducing demand, seizing unlawful profits, tracking financial flows and focusing relentlessly on gang kingpins, not foot soldiers, are among the ways to change this.

The status and sense of belonging that attracts some into gangs needs to be tackled, too, partly by striving harder to ensure that violent lifestyles are not glamourised through inflammatory forms of drill music, social media or even corporate endorsement.

Education and investment in social support to give every young person, however deprived, the feeling that they can succeed in a law-abiding life is similarly important.

Given the disproportionately large number of young black men and boys falling victim to gang violence, this matters for racial equality, too. Gangs have blighted the capital for too long and success in dismantling them, as Malthouse wants, cannot come soon enough.

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