Knife crime: myth and reality

Knife crime: myth and reality
by Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
6 May 2019

Fuelled by the right-wing media, a number of myths have grown up around the topic of knife crime. With the number of knife offences (39,818) and homicides committed with a knife (285) reaching record highs in 2018, according to the Home Office, it’s worth interrogating these falsehoods, and considering interventions which might help.

Myth: Knife crime is committed “almost exclusively” by young Black men. Speaking on ITV’s Good Morning Britain in March, co-host Piers Morgan stated “statistically, it looks like in London, right now… the perpetrators and the victims appear to be almost exclusively young Black men.”

Reality: Citing Freedom of Information requests made to police forces, in July 2018 Sky News noted that in London “Almost half of murder victims – as well as suspects – were black despite the ethnic group accounting for just 13% of London’s population.” However, Sky News also explained “Numbers for the rest of the country painted a different picture, with murder victim and suspect figures more or less proportionate to the makeup of the population.” For example, in February BBC News noted the worst place for fatal stabbings in the UK, in proportion to population, was Inverclyde in Scotland. A few miles to the east the 95 per cent white Glasgow was, until recently, dubbed – by the Daily Mail – “the knife crime capital of Britain”.

“There are likely to be important socio-economic factors in homicides that cannot be examined using” the basic data, a 2019 Office for National Statistics report conceded. Indeed, according to the Serious Violence Strategy published by the government last year “the evidence on links between serious violence and ethnicity is limited. Once other factors are controlled for, it is not clear from the evidence whether ethnicity is a predictor of offending or victimisation.” Taking a “wide range of factors into account”, including ethnicity, a 2003 study by the Youth Justice Board titled Young People & Street Crime echoed this conclusion. It found “two main factors explained differences in the levels of street crime between [London] boroughs… the level of deprivation… and the extent of population change” – the number of young people as a proportion of the total population.

“Crime is prevalent in poor areas, and since black people are disproportionality poor, they are disproportionately affected – as perpetrators and victims”, The Guardian’s Gary Younge noted in 2017, after extensive investigative work into knife crime. “It’s class – not race or culture – that is the defining issue.”

Myth: Stop and search is effective in reducing knife crime. “Police in England and Wales are being given greater stop and search powers to tackle rising knife crime”, BBC News reported at the end of March. “Home Secretary Sajid Javid is making it easier for officers to search people without reasonable suspicion in places where serious violence may occur.”

Reality: “There is a misconception that just doing loads more stop and search is the solution… that is simply not the case”, explained Nick Glynn, the former College of Policing lead on stop and search, on Channel 4 News last month. The news programme compared Metropolitan Police figures on Section 60 stop and search powers – which allow the police to introduce stop and search without suspicion in a designated area at a specific time – with knife crime offences from the Mayor of London’s office. In 2016 the Met used Section 60 442 times, and there was 11,132 knife crime offences. In 2018 the Met massively increased their use of section 60 to 7,326 times. However, there was also an increase in knife crime offences in the same year – to 14,714.

“The inconsistent nature and weakness” of the association between stop and search and crime levels, “provide only limited evidence of stop and search having acted as a deterrent at a borough level”, a 2017 College of Policing study concluded after analysing data from 2000-2014.

This is not news. Citing a study conducted by Marian Fitzgerald, a Visiting Professor of Criminology at the University of Kent, in 2010 the Guardian noted “there is little connection between the use of stop and search powers by the Metropolitan police and reductions in knife crime.”

Fitzgerald analysed the use of Section 60 in London. “The boroughs which have resisted politically driven pressures to take a gung-ho approach to using Section 60 have been as successful in reducing knife crime, and often more so, than the boroughs where the police have been happy to let Section 60 searches go through the roof”, she noted.

Myth: More and tougher prison sentences will reduce knife crime. “Despite the rhetoric you hear from politicians about being tough on those who carry knives two-thirds of people who are convicted don’t face prison”, John Apter, Chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, noted on Good Morning Britain in March. “We have a Justice Secretary saying we need to scarp shorter sentences because the prisons are full. My argument – build more prisons.”

Reality: The evidence shows that compared to ten years ago those convicted for carrying a knife are more likely to be jailed, and if jailed they are more likely to spend longer inside. Quoting Ministry of Justice figures, in March BBC News explained that 37 per cent of offenders were jailed and a further 18 per cent given suspended prison sentences in 2018, compared to 20 per cent and 9 per cent respectively in 2008. The average prison term has increased from five months in 2008 to well over eight months in 2018, with 85 per cent serving at least three months in 2018, compared to 53 per cent in 2008.

More broadly, the UK has the highest imprisonment rate in Western Europe (141 prisoners per 100,000 people).

However, it is essential to understand “there is no link between the prison population and levels of crime”, as the Prison Reform Trust explained in its 2018 Bromley Briefing, directly quoting the National Audit Office. Robert Reiner, Professor of Criminology at the London School of Economics, confirmed this awkward fact in the Guardian in 2007: “A plethora of research shows that the criminal justice system can have little effect on crime overall, which flows from deeper social and cultural wellsprings”.

Tackling the real causes of knife crime

Speaking on Good Morning Britain in March Akala, a hip hop artist and author of Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire, noted “the social indicators” of violent street crime have remained “consistent for 200 years: relative poverty, masculinity, exposure to domestic violence, lack of education.”

His take broadly echoes the thoughts of Patricia Gallan, who was Assistant Commissioner Specialist Crime and Operations in the Metropolitan Police. “If you start looking at where crime impacts, it happens in the poorest areas of society”, she told the Guardian in June 2018. “Those that end up in the criminal justice system tend to be the people who have less money and less opportunity in society.”

The austerity implemented since 2010 by the Tories (and Lib Dems until 2015) has created a perfect storm of harmful societal effects. Inequality and absolute poverty increased in 2017-18, according to Department for Work and Pensions data; over 100 youth centres have closed in London since the 2011 riots, according to figures obtained by the Green Party’s Sian Berry; the number of primary school children who have been excluded across the country has doubled since 2011, according to official government data. Most frightening is the recent warning from the Resolution Foundation’s Adam Corlett that the “bulk” of the effects of the government’s planned £12 billion benefit cuts will be felt over the next few years, with poverty rates likely to increase to a record high.

Poverty, inequality and deprivation – these are the factors that need to be addressed if we want to significantly reduce knife crime. However, beyond these big shifts, it seems positive change is also possible within the current political and economic system.

In Glasgow, until recently the so-called “murder capital of Europe” with acute levels of knife crime, a Violence Reduction Unit was set up in 2005. Taking an arms-length relationship with the police, the unit has adopted a holistic, public health approach to the issue, working with the health, education and social work sectors, shifting away from seeing the problem as a purely criminal issue. The result? A substantial reduction in the number of children and teenagers killed by knives.

Follow Ian on Twitter @IanJSinclair.

Documentary review: Combat Obscura directed by Miles Lagoze

Documentary review: Combat Obscura directed by Miles Lagoze
by Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
29 April 2019

IN 2011, Miles Lagoze deployed to the Sangin-Kajacki area of Afghanistan as a combat cameraman to shoot and edit videos for the US Marine Corps.

Those videos, shot in northern Helmand province, were “a PR tool for the military,” the 29-year old veteran told The Intercept website. With Washington keen to publicise the Afghan army taking over from US forces in the fight against the Taliban-led insurgency, his job was to document marines working with the Afghan army, “giving candy to kids — hearts-and-minds type of stuff.“

The big three no-nos were “no cursing, no shots of guys smoking cigarettes and they have to be in full gear. And then no casualties. That was a big one, not too much bloodshed.”

Lagoze did all this for the US military – and then kept filming. Combat Obscura is made up of the footage the US military didn’t want you to see.

Taking a grunt’s-eye view of the war, there are long periods of boredom interrupted by short bursts of intense, adrenaline-fuelled combat. Soldiers smoke marijuana, disrespect the local population and kill an unarmed shopkeeper.

At one point a marine aggressively waves a gun at a group of children demanding “Where’s the fucking Taliban?”

With no narration or explanation, Combat Obscura is a confusing, impressionistic take on the ongoing military occupation of Afghanistan. Yet it it highlights some uncomfortable truths for the US and British political and military establishments, with the media in tow, who initiated the war and have backed it since 2001, an incredible 18 years ago.

In one of the film’s longest scenes, a group of marines search a village for a “high-value target.” Local men are detained, photographed and fingerprinted and one US soldier is filmed shortly after taking a shit in the garden of a house.

With no arrests made, the marines hold a debrief meeting. “Are they pissed off at us?” asks one soldier. “I would be pissed,” answers his superior.

This understanding that the very presence and actions of the foreign occupying forces is likely energising the armed insurgency is not confined to US troops.

As British lieutenant Jimmy Clark explained about an operation to secure a road in northern Helmand in the 2012 BBC3 series Our War, “one of the problems, especially with IEDs (improvised explosive devices) on the route 611, is that the insurgents aren’t trying to blow up the ANCOP (Afghan National Civil Order Police), or even the civilians, they are just trying to blow up us.

“So we are actually in a position where we are protecting a route which only needs protecting because we use it.”

Having experienced the war first-hand, Lagoze himself is highly critical of the US intervention. “While we were there, we created an almost uninhabitable environment for the Afghan civilians,” he told The Intercept.

“Before we were there, they were oppressed by the Taliban. While we were there, they were caught in the middle between two oppressive forces. And how many times did we bomb their houses? How many times did we mistakenly kill innocent people?”

Combat Obscura is available for viewing online, download details: combatobscura.oscilloscope.net.

NATO’s 2011 war on Libya: myth and reality

NATO’s 2011 war on Libya: myth and reality
by Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
27 April 2019

Last month retired British major-general Rob Weighill gave a public lecture at the London School of Economics titled The Cauldron: NATO’s 2011 Operation to Protect Civilians in Libya – based on his new co-authored book of the same title published by Hurst.

Triggered by the Libyan government’s crackdown on anti-government rebels, Operation Unified Protector ran from March 2011 to the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in October 2011. The official NATO war aim was the protection of civilians, set out in United Nations Resolution 1973.

As the person who led the planning and directed operations during the Libya intervention from NATO’s Joint Force Command, Weighill provided an insider account of NATO’s air campaign, which he considers a success. However, during the lecture Weighill made a series of misleading statements about the conflict which deserve to be challenged.

Myth: Weighill said “We [NATO] had no direct comms [communications] with the rebels. We were unable to talk to the anti-Gaddafi rebels.”

Reality: Special Forces from NATO member nations, including France and the UK, were deployed in Libya to support the rebels. “By every account, the presence of foreign ground advisors working with Libyan opposition forces had a transformative effect on [NATO] airpower”, Dr Frederic Wehrey wrote in Foreign Policy in 2013, after conducting two dozen interviews with anti-Qaddafi commanders. “Libyan interlocutors described how, in the operations rooms of Misrata, Zintan, and Benghazi, these advisors built trust between Western forces and the opposition and — most importantly — coordinated [NATO] airstrikes.”

According to Wehrey “Opposition forces and their sympathizers across the country formed a complex network of spotters, informants, forward observers, and battle damage assessors… The problem that NATO faced, therefore, was not a shortage of targeting information, but a flood of it.” In May 2011 a “senior European diplomat” confirmed to the Guardian that NATO’s bombing campaign was “relying strongly on information supplied by rebel leaders”.

Why does Weighill deny there was any communication between NATO and rebel forces? With the rebels fighting to overthrow the Libyan government committing “serious violations, including war crimes and breaches of international human rights law”, according to a 2012 United Nations Human Rights Council report, admitting support would likely have significant legal implications. For example, Wehrey notes “there was an acute awareness” among rebels “that NATO was only engaging weapons that were firing at civilians. In response, several opposition commanders acknowledged trying to provoke Qaddafi’s artillery into firing in the direction of civilians so that NATO would strike.”

Myth: Weighill referred to NATO’s “maritime embargo… the prevention of the movement of weapons and ammunition et al.”

Reality: Writing in Foreign Policy in 2016, Micah Zenko, a Senior Fellow with Chatham House, noted United Nations Resolution 1970 “was supposed to prohibit arms transfers to either side of the war in Libya”. NATO officials repeatedly claimed their air and sea blockade was successful, with NATO’s Spokesperson stating on 7 July 2011 “the arms embargo is effective.”

In reality, the US – the dominant military power in NATO – “gave its blessing to arms shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar” and the UAE in spring 2011, according to a 2012 New York Times report. “NATO air and sea forces around Libya had to be alerted not to interdict the cargo planes and freighters transporting the arms to Libya from Qatar and the emirates”, according to US officials.

Moreover, an October 2011 Guardian report noted Qatar had deployed “hundreds of troops” to Libya in support of the rebel forces. “We acted as the link between the rebel and NATO forces”, Qatar’s Chief-of-Staff told AFP news agency.

In addition to NATO contravening the very UN resolution [1970] they claimed to be upholding, it is important to note supplying arms to rebel forces is itself illegal, according to Olivier Corten and Vaios Koutroulis, two scholars in international law, in a 2013 article in the Journal of Conflict & Security Law.

Myth: Weighill referred to “the fact that every single mission that was undertaken by NATO air and maritime forces was done so with the key effect to protect civilians.”

Reality: In 2016 the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee concluded “If the primary object of the coalition intervention was the urgent need to protect civilians in Benghazi, then this objective was achieved in less than 24 hours.” Contrary to Weighill’s claim, Anne-Marie Slaughter, the Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department, explained to the New York Times in 2016 that “we did not try to protect civilians on Qaddafi’s side.” However, even Slaughter’s admission downplays the extent of NATO’s anti-civilian actions in Libya: the evidence suggests NATO didn’t just “not try to protect civilians” supporting Gaddafi, as Slaughter asserts, but provided air cover for rebel forces as they killed – and committed war crimes against – civilians.

The rebels “used inherently indiscriminate weapons in their military offensives against cities perceived as loyalist”, noted a 2012 UN Human Rights Council report. Nowhere more so than in Sirte, which was pulverised by rebel ground forces supported by NATO airstrikes in September-October 2011. “The Commission found that almost every building exhibited damage”, the UN Human Rights Council found. The Washington Post confirmed Sirte was “largely destroyed” in the fighting, with “the revolutionaries… firing purloined antiaircraft guns and artillery at apartment buildings where pro-Gaddafi snipers have holed up, causing heavy damage.”

Myth: “We had a policy in the [NATO] Joint Task Force that if anybody mentioned regime change they were instantly expelled from the headquarters”, Weighill said. “NATO’s view… was not about regime change.”

Reality: Weighill himself shoots holes in his own account by noting earlier in his lecture that “Number 10 [the UK], the White House [the US] and Versailles [France] were constantly referring to regime change.” So apparently the three dominant military powers in NATO wanted regime change but this wasn’t translated into NATO policy, according to Weighill. Confused? Others observers of the conflict are more honest. After hearing testimony from scholars and government officials and senior military figures, including former Chief of the Defence Staff Lord David Richards, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee confirmed “a limited intervention to protect civilians drifted into a policy of regime change by military means.”

The Royal United Services Institute, an establishment think-tank very close to the UK military, concurs, referring in a 2012 report to how “the initial security council resolution was contorted out of all recognition from the protection of civilians to, in effect, outright regime change”. Zenko simply states “In truth, the Libyan intervention was about regime change from the very start.”

Why is Weighill so explicit in his rejection of regime change? The answer, once again, likely concerns international law, which explicitly prohibits regime change, as Attorney General Lord Goldsmith warned Tony Blair in 2003.

Discovering the truth about NATO’s intervention

The Foreign Affairs Committee concluded “The result” of NATO’s intervention “was political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of ISIL in North Africa.” This indictment, combined with the serious legal questions raised by Weighill’s lecture, suggests British historian Mark Curtis was right to call for a public inquiry into the Libya intervention last year.

The Cauldron: NATO’s Campaign in Libya by Rob Weighill and Florence Gaub is published by Hurst, priced £40.

Follow Ian on Twitter @IanJSinclair.