There is an urgency to tackle youth knife crime, gang activity and child criminal exploitation which continues to hit working-class communities the hardest.
We have some of the highest levels of Section 60 ‘stop and search’ notices in Greater Manchester, with seven in Limeside alone in recent years, and orders covering Coppice, Westwood, Oldham Town Centre & Royton over the same period show how wide the issues cover.
Knife crime is not inevitable. We need a step change in how we safeguard children from violence & criminal exploitation and to learn the hard lessons from child sexual exploitation where young victims were too often treated as the problem, when they were definitely not; the offenders and system which failed them were at fault.
That means recognising vulnerability, not just criminality; restoring trust in communities; and rebuilding the foundations in our youth services, safe spaces, and neighbourhood networks.
It doesn’t take away individual responsibility nor the role of parents of course, but with so much intimidation and threats escalating online through messaging & platform apps, much isn’t seen until it’s too late. We have to tackle it at every turn.
No one wants to see another life lost, as we saw just streets away from the constituency in New Moston, and there are far too many reported across Greater Manchester.
I’ll continue to work with Kate Green as Deputy Mayor for Policing & the Violence Reduction Unit and local partners to do all I can to tackle this surge.
See the speech in-full below ⬇️
Jim McMahon OBE MP 