Crime and Welfare

This year has seen violence escalate to dramatic levels within London with a total of 63 murders having been committed in the first four and half months of 2018. Even Donald Trump has had his say, blaming gun control for the stabbings in a “warzone” capital. As if to prove him wrong, the first May Bank Holiday weekend also added two gun crimes to the sad toll of youth deaths and injuries.

Like everyone else, I had been blaming cuts to the already stretched police service for these crimes. Even the Home Office admitted in a leaked document that the cuts to the service and the loss of 21,000 police officers over seven years “may have encouraged” a rise in crime. However, this week I heard some news about a former pupil that made me realise the situation is far more complex and ultimately going to cause more problems in our society.

As a teacher, it’s always the sad news about former students that gets communicated — like the former pupil we lost to knife crime in November 2015. In that year he was the twelfth teenage victim of knife crime. This week I found out a former pupil, now in his first year of adulthood, had just been sentenced to three years in prison for intent to supply crack cocaine.

Usually crime, especially drugs, repels me — but for the first time I can see the person, the humanity behind the crime. My former pupil already had a tough background and was growing up in an area without many opportunities. In the last eight years though, as he left my sphere of influence at primary school and approached adulthood, things have undeniably got worse for all working people and particularly the young.

There is no longer free university education and the tuition fees have grown to make it an impossible ambition for those without a family of means behind them. And, unless your degree guarantees a job which can easily repay £27,000 plus ever growing interest, you will be saddled with a lifetime of debt.

We are living in a wealthy country where not only the police, but health and social care are underfunded and being run into the ground to enable privatisation. Terminally ill people are being declared ‘fit to work’ and 55% of NHS trusts cannot deal with the numbers of patients waiting for care.

Buying property is out of the scope of many young people and rents are rocketing with young people four times as likely to rent than their parents and grandparents and 20% of people in privately rented accommodation. Only campaigning by charities forced the government to restore housing benefit to 18–21 year-olds and young people under 25 still don’t qualify for a national living wage despite having many of the same financial burdens and tax responsibilities of those older than them.

Our welfare safety net is being tightened with people who claim benefits (the majority of whom are in work whether it be full time or employer-friendly zero hour contracts) being sanctioned and forced to exist on food banks and short-term high-interest loans to survive. Malnutrition levels are up, food bank usage at an all-time high (with 27% of mothers aged 16–24 using them). The TUC estimates that there are now 3.1 million children with working parents who are living below the breadline.That is an increase of one million children since the Conservative party entered power in 2010.

The young people of Britain are being robbed of their health care, education and even being able to buy food for their children (only two, there’s no help if you accidentally fall pregnant — abortions are also increasing as parents are forced to terminate pregnancies and families with three or more children have a 50% chance of living in poverty by 2022).

What kind of society are we building for the future when nurses use food banks and our young people are not valued enough to even receive the same wages or benefits as those older than them?

What hope is there for our young? What kind of world are we offering them? Clearly not one that cares about their needs. If we don’t care for them they must make their own way and survive for themselves. Is it any wonder that so many are turning to gangs and crime?

I don’t condone drug crime, but for the first time I can understand why someone might sell drugs. When your country doesn’t care for you, you still need to survive and feed yourself. Zero-hour contracts and welfare cuts mean there is no back-up plan when times are hard. If you want to feed your children and have used up your food bank vouchers, crime can seem to be the only way out and indeed for many might be the only option.

Until we change our society and reassure the young with actions, not soundbites, that we care for them, crime will continue to rise. We need to educate our children and invest in them. They are the future. Our country will rise or fall with them.

Looking at my former pupil’s mug-shot in the paper I don’t see a criminal, I see a victim of circumstances. The real criminals are in Westminster.