Simon's blog

5 July 2010 – and the teenagers continue to kill each other ...

In south London last week yet another teenager was stabbed to death for no reason like all the other killings over the recent year. Why are our black young people compelled to continue to annihilate one another with such vicious and barbaric acts of murder? These people are still children using stabbings and shootings like a perverse children’s game that has gone horribly wrong with no sense of self-worth or social accountability. They are emerging as a growing generation that is outcast and unable to function within society and yet they will be our future

This latest slaying in a disastrous futile game of machismo happened in the week our new Justice Secretary, The Rt Hon Kenneth Clarke announced in a talk given to the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, (London), the end of the era of long prison sentence policies – ‘’ bang ‘em up’’ introduced by the conservatives in the 1990s. He also offered no alterative solution however! Clearly his statements and those made later by the prime minister have much more to do with government cuts than making society safer and genuine restorative justice. Our society has an over-burdened prison population for a reason that reflects the core problems facing Britain. What will effectively be done with the growing breed of young killers and the other disaffected violent generation.