Gangs and Serious Youth Violence

Debate between Matthew Pennycook and David Lammy

Thursday 3rd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

I am so pleased that my hon. Friend raises that issue, because that is the other factor that is new. I am about to come on to that.

The young age profile has something to do with the fact that enforcement on this national problem is working: the police are locking people up. We are serious about people carrying a knife and, historically, we have been serious about people carrying a gun. The police have locked up some of the older individuals, particularly after the 2011 riots, but all that has done is to drive the crime down to younger individuals.

My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham made a point about the definition of gangs. It is very dangerous to call any congregation of young people a gang. It almost feels as though we call any congregation of young black and brown people a gang. Those of us in the House who have children, particularly children who are getting to their teenage years, know that, to a 12 or 13-year-old, joining a gang is quite attractive. We therefore need to be very careful about the definition of gangs.

[Matthew Pennycook]

My right hon. Friend rightly raises what happens when the police target older members of criminal gangs—I am talking about criminal gangs, not groups of young people—in operations. It leaves a vacuum that triggers a spike in violence among the younger, lower orders of the gangs, who have been drawn in for the very reasons he cites.

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend is completely right. What is unfortunately being said about the moral compass of these young people is incredibly worrying. They are impressionable; they are young. For reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham raised, when I say that they are impressionable, I am referring to the fact that we live in a society that has prioritised choice for the individual above everything else. We live in a society where people have the choice of whether to be exposed to quite serious violence on social media, on television and in parts, although not all, of the games industry. It is hard for modern parents, however much money they have, to distinguish between access to those images and that impression.

We therefore have young people stabbing others, almost as if they do not realise the consequences. It is quite, quite bizarre that someone might not realise that puncturing skin and causing blood loss might lead to a loss of life. I have seen images—they are on YouTube, so we can see them—of young people being stabbed continuously and it being almost like a pastime. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford is right that much of this goes completely unreported. It never turns up in our hospitals. It is solved by self-medication. People go to the pharmacy and get their band aid. It is sorted out in the community, so there is an indication that this violence is going down.

My hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) raised something else that is new and worrying and that we would not associate, historically, with mods and rockers or Dickensian times: the phenomenon of women, including young women, being at the centre of the action. Again, as some of the older individuals who run the gangs have been locked up—actually, let us be clear that they can still run a gang from prison—they bring in the younger folk. Why? Young folk are less likely to get a sentence if they are caught. They also bring in the women on the estates and prey on the young women. Historically, the Children’s Commissioner has done tremendous work to raise issues such as the sexualisation of women and the way in which women become the victims of gang activity. Someone can hide the knife in their girlfriend’s bedroom or hide their stash with her. She can walk quietly over to the opposite estate and perhaps not get detected or picked up in quite the same way, so the profile is changing.