Knife crime on rise as youth services cut

Knife crime in London has increased by almost 10% in the past year as local authorities cut youth services. Photograph: Katie Collins/PA

UK cities should brace themselves for a summer of gang and knife violence as the impact of cuts to youth services takes hold, experts are warning.

Youth violence is already increasing in London. Figures given to the Guardian reveal that serious youth violence increased by 4% year on year across the capital, with a 9.6% hike in knife crime.

There are fears that deep reductions in youth service budgets, particularly to programmes that divert inner-city youths away from gangs and knife crime, could have a devastating impact on crime levels.

Professor John Pitts, who advises several London local authorities on gangs and violent crime, warned that inner cities were likely to experience increased crime as the holidays begin.

"If you cut summer activities for young people as night follows day you will see an increase in crime," he said. "My anxiety is that those gang members who were in school will now be on the streets. Coupled with cuts to the services they use and fewer youth workers who can mediate, those streets will be a lot more dangerous and I would expect the level of crime and violence to rise."

Gang violence, including peer violence against girls and young women, is increasing, he said. "It is getting worse, it is becoming more embedded and more serious – this is not the time to be pulling the plug."

Eight teenagers have died in London already this year, including Negus McLean, 15, who was chased by seven youths on bicycles before being stabbed. Earlier this month Yemurai Kanyangarara, 16, died after being stabbed in the neck – two 15-years-old youths and a 14-year-old boy have since been arrested.

According to Scotland Yard the number of recorded knife-crime injuries in London went up from 941 to 1,070 in the three months between February and April this year compared with the previous three months; victims in the 13-24 age group injured during knife crime increased by more than 30% between 2008-09 and 2010-11.

Youth services, particularly those that prevent gang violence, have been savaged by local authorities because of government-imposed cuts. More than ?100m was removed from local authority services for young people up to March this year, according to the Confederation of Heads of Young People's Services, which surveyed 41 of their members. Budget cuts imposed at the start of the financial year averaged 28%, but some local authorities were cutting 70%, 80% or even 100% of youth services, it said. Almost 3,000 full-time staff who work with youths have been lost.

Universal services such as youth clubs have been hit hardest: 96% of the 41 heads of youth services who responded said club activities would be either reduced or stopped altogether by April next year.

MPs on the education select committee warned parliament last month that "disproportionate budget reductions" could have "dramatic and long-lasting" consequences. Graham Stuart, the select committee's chairman, said the current situation was "damaging" and an increase in crime was "inevitable". He said: "Tim Loughton [the children's minister] has said that cuts to children's services are disproportionate and we agree."

Youth services have been cut in every area of the country. According to the union Unison, Norfolk, Suffolk, Buckinghamshire and Manchester part of a "growing number of local authorities planning to get rid of the youth service altogether". Birmingham is likely to reduce youth services by 50% over the next three years; Haringey and Hull local authorities have cut 75% of its their youth services; Warwickshire is facing an 80% cut; the prime minister's Witney constituency, in Oxfordshire, has closed 20 out of 27 youth centres – there is not a youth service in the country that remains untouched.

At the same time London Councils – a lobbying organisation that promotes the interests of the 32 London boroughs, the City of London, the Metropolitan Police Authority and the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority – has warned about the consequences of slashing funding to youth-offending teams by as much as 30% in some boroughs.

And the Youth Justice Board is to be scrapped, leading MPs to warn that the move could prove costly if crime rates rise.

The government hopes the voluntary sector will play a bigger role in tackling the youth violence, announcing ?18m of funding earlier this year to help charities tackle knife, gun and gang crime after Brooke Kinsella, the actress turned knife crime campaigner whose brother Ben was killed in 2008, released a report.

Some charities argue this is not new money, and with 70% of voluntary organisation funding coming from already squeezed local authorities, according to the union Unison, some in the sector fear charities will be unable to provide a comprehensive system.

Smaller charities, while doing positive work, can be unco-ordinated and much effective inter-agency work will be lost, warned Mick Hurley, an adviser to Greater Manchester police on serious youth violence, who was awarded an OBE last year for services to young people.

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A working life: The environmental crime investigator

Environmental protection officer Patricia Henry at work in Enfield. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

I am in a thread-like alley in the back end of the London borough of Enfield wading through a scurf of beer cans, chicken bones and oozing, unidentifiable things in knotted carrier bags. The stench of excrement is so thick I can almost taste it. Patricia Henry is pointing her camera at a collapsed shed which balances like a sculpture on a heap of unwanted furniture. "My great fear," she says, "is that one day, in one of these alleys, a huge dog will come tearing out at me."

Henry, 46, is an environmental crime officer with the borough council and her photographic eye is an unusual one. Not for her the willows and waterways of Enfield's pleasanter pockets; her albums feature meticulous portraits of bin liners split and leaking, of graffitied obscenities on walls, railings festooned by estate agents boards and the occasional action shot of a flow of canine nature.

While her colleagues in environmental health pick their way through hazardously insanitary homes, Henry and her eight-strong team tackle more public filth. "Street scene enforcement" is the official term; those ubiquitous stained mattresses slumped on grass verges are her call to arms. She pursues builders who sling inconvenient rubble into alleyways, householders who put their bin bags out too early, estate agents who tether their boards to park fencing and the night skulkers who paste flyers to available flat surfaces. "Estate agents are a big problem because they must remove their board within 14 days of a sale or let, but they prefer to leave them up indefinitely," she says.

The boards are an eyesore, but they are among the less unpleasant nuisances that demand her attention. Much of Henry's week is spent rummaging through illicitly dumped waste seeking evidence to identify the culprit. This is a job that requires a strong stomach. It also calls for sleuthing skills. "That's why I dress like this," she laughs, modelling her black trousers, black jacket and stout black lace-up shoes.

Recently her detective work brought about the successful prosecution of an off-licence which had been dumping packaging in bins reserved for local authority residents. "Someone reported a car registration number which we traced, then found till receipts which led back to the shop," she says. "In about 40% of cases there's some kind of evidence such as receipts, labels or addressed envelopes."

Once she has identified a suspect, Henry's powers extend to summonsing them to Enfield's civic centre and questioning them under caution. If they refuse she doorsteps them with her fat black notebook. When the evidence is sound enough she can bring a prosecution and seek to reclaim the considerable cost of cleaning up after the offender.

Even in today's 25C heat, Henry wears her fluorescent yellow jacket with the council logo, so that Enfield's environmental mission is reassuringly visible to locals, who can approach her with their concerns. Has she ever thought of transferring her skills to police work? "I wouldn't mind being a magistrate," she replies.

It was shopping trolleys that propelled her into her current career six years ago. "Dozens of them, abandoned all over he place," she says. "It was my bugbear and I was forever complaining to the supermarkets. I've always been passionate about the problem of litter, so when this job was advertised I knew it would suit me."

That passion has not waned. "I thank the Lord daily that I got the job," she says. "Every complaint is important to the person who makes it so you have to give it your all, because it might have repercussions for them."

Henry plots her patrols each morning when she arrives at her office and opens up the list of complaints from the public that have been logged by the council's customer services hotline. On an ordinary day there are about half a dozen, most reporting fly tipping or dog fouling, as well as emails sent to her direct from residents' associations or from street hawks – local people who volunteer to be the eyes and ears of the neighbourhood.

She is responsible for three wards and can clock up 20 miles a day in her investigations. "Sometimes I might spend a couple of days doing paperwork at my desk," she says. "Each case has to be followed up with the complainant and warning letters have to be sent out to offenders. Sometimes there's an emergency such as newly dumped rubbish which might contain evidence so then I rush there, take photographs and go through it in my mask and gloves."

Today a resident has alerted her to a garden shed that has been disposed of in an alley between two rows of back gardens. Someone else has spotted a neighbour allowing her dog to foul grass verges and there's been a messy incident behind some garages. Henry prints out the report forms and heads for her car with her fluorescent jacket and a pull-along suitcase. "All my kit's in here," she says. "Rubber gloves, mask, camera, leaflets about waste disposal to hand out to householders, pink bin liners labelled 'illegally dumped waste' in which I bag up rubbish left on a public highway to alert the cleansing teams and prevent duplicate complaints and, in the car boot, a pair of wellies for when things get really mucky."

En route to the dumped shed she pulls into a side road to check up on a malodorous alley behind a row of shops. "Traders have been using the residents' bins to dump their excess waste and avoid paying collectors to remove it," she says.

The passage is littered with beer cans, two mattresses, the back shelf of a car and broken planking. A pyramid of dog waste blocks a small drain, evidently tipped there. Henry resolves to leaflet householders and traders in the surrounding area, and will add the alley to the itinerary when she and her colleagues head out en masse on their regular eco patrols.

Since the alley is private land the council has no responsibility to remove the clutter unless it's blocking the large council-owned bins. "We could serve notice on the landlord to take action," she says. "Sometimes we do a land registry search to find out who owns it but if it's a group of residents, enforcement can get complicated."

Does she ever fear aggression as a lone woman, stalking alleys and confronting defensive strangers? "A woman did once come at me in a passageway, but she was clearly mad," she reflects. "I'm always very polite and friendly so I've never had a problem."

Next on her list is the dumped shed. The informant has provided her with a house number, but the tenant denies all knowledge. Henry hears him out politely and, by dint of apparently innocent social chit chat, elicits possibly incriminating details such as his posse of dogs, who could be at the root of the fouling round the corner. She outlines the rules for waste disposal and tells him the case is closed. Her visit alone will hopefully prevent a repeat offence. "Because the shed is on private land and isn't a public health hazard we're not obliged to remove it," she explains. "If the complainant is prepared to go to court we could prosecute; otherwise I might alert the manager of the housing association or send teams of low-level offenders to clear it as part of the community service scheme Operation Payback."

A couple of miles away is the house of the alleged dog fouler. As she draws up, Henry notices a mountain of bin bags on the pavement outside; today is not waste collection day. A nervous young woman, who admits to owning a dog but claims he lives with her at a different address, says she'd got her dates mixed up. She obediently hauls six of the sacks back on to her drive but disowns another two that have burst open, strewing dirty nappies and rotting food on to the pavement. Nobody she knows has a baby, she says.

Henry dons her gloves, peels off the black plastic and starts rummaging through, apparently oblivious to the stench. By now I'm so caught up, I start tracking a mother pushing a pram past. Nappies must abound in her rubbish, but she recedes disappointingly into another street.

The second sack yields a clue: two letters bearing the address of a neighbour up the road who happens to be mowing his front lawn behind a lopsided To Let sign. Henry bustles up, charming smile in place and listens amiably as the man explains that he'd left the sacks in the road outside his house two days prematurely to reserve a space for his car and they had inexplicably vanished.

Patiently Henry explains that sacks in the road are an illegal obstruction of the highway, and she elicits in the process that the man has a young baby and has lived in the house for several months. The To Let sign has therefore been left by the estate agent who will now be contacted and given 14 days to remove it.

"I could write the tenant a letter but I'll probably just open a file on that address and take action if I get more complaints," she says.

As she drives off, Bin Bag Man approaches Dog Dirt Lady and declares he has no knowledge of how his rubbish came to be strewn outside her driveway. We leave them, arms gesticulating, in the middle of the road.

"It's nice," says Henry wryly, "to be able to help neighbours get to know each other."

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