It has been a busy few days in the fierce debate about addressing the knife crime problem in England and Wales. London Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick unveiled year-on-year declines in knife crime and homicides in the capital for the year ended March, and claimed it was thanks to more police stop and search. Just days earlier, the College of Policing, which oversees police standards in England and Wales, said more or less the opposite about the tactic. Stop and search, it said, risks aggrieving people subjected to it and making them more likely to commit violent crimes down the line; instead, it wants England and Wales to adopt the more progressive approach to policing that has emerged in Scotland.
* This article was originally published here
