MPS Assistant Commissioner Patricia Gallan said in an interview with the Guardian newspaper today that rising inequality in Britain is one of the driving forces of the increase in crime, insisting that “children are not born bad.”
She said the government needs to tackle the issues which are pushing people into a life of crime as opposed to solely seeking punitive measures for offenders.
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“I think we deal with the symptoms and the outcomes, but society at large has got to think about how we solve some of the other issues about what has been causing the crime in the first place. I don’t think children are born bad. I don’t believe that for one moment,” Met Assistant Commissioner Patricia Gallan said on Thursday.
“If we don’t invest at the beginning we’ll have to invest in it in terms of criminal justice and in the prison system,” she warned.
The senior Met police official, who also serves as a close advisor to MPS Commissioner Cresida Dick, proceeded to say most people who are prosecuted and end up in prison “have less money and less opportunity” and said “this is not good for society, for social cohesion.”
Gallan did however insist that being poor is not an excuse to commit crimes, but explained that these people have little to lose and find a “sense of belonging” in gangs and other criminal enterprises.
So far this year, there has been almost 1,300 stabbings in London alone, resulting in dozens of deaths in Britain’s capital.
Politicians and experts have attributed the ongoing rise in violent to Tory cuts to the budgets of police forces throughout the UK, resulting in the loss of over 20,000 police officers.
The government has denied these claims and is continuing with its austerity measures to reduce the budget deficit, resisting calls for additional funding to be provided to police forces in the interest of public safety.
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