An Appropriate Response?

                               

The chart above shows the relative sizes of the varying ethnic communities in London. It is interesting to read in connection with statistics issued by the Metropolitan Police in response to a Freedom of Information request from the Telegraph newspaper. They summarise information from a survey of 18,091 males  proceeded against by the police in London in 2009-10. They appear to show that black men are responsible for a disproportionately large number of serious offences (see next chart).

                               

We have to be very careful reading this sort of data. We do not know, for example, how many crimes were repetitious offences by the same individuals, or how many of those proceeded against by the police were later found guilty. But it is obvious that a problem exists within the black community. My own suspicion is that the attitudes responsible for it are historically recent, and are introduced from the gang culture of the Kingston slums. What is the official response?

According to Richard Garside, of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King's College London,

"Given Britain's long history of racism and imperialism it should not greatly surprise us that black and minority groups are disproportionately members of social classes that have tended to experience greater victimisation and to be the subject of police attention". In other words, it's everybody else's fault.

Yesterday London's ninth fatal stabbing this year took place as a fourteen year old black boy was grabbed by a gang at the gates of his school and knifed to death. If we are to prevent such tragedies in future, we're going to need more than the kind of knee-jerk Marxist claptrap offered above.