We need a Royal Commission to investigate the root causes of violent crime

By Peter Barnard

I, for one, do not believe that our society is “broken.” Millions – the vast majority – of people go about their daily business without a criminal thought in their head and the majority of people live in harmony.

However, not only have we had Edlington, there was “Baby Peter”, the Victoria Climbie case, Stephen Laurence and many others too numerous to mention.

Most cases have been followed by an investigation but what is missing is that each case is investigated in isolation and so we do not know if there is a common thread connecting these cases.

For sure, such manifestations of violence are too important to be left to politicians to argue over. We need an independent investigation, across all cases and across all areas that addresses everything that needs addressing.

This sounds to me like a classic instance for a Royal Commission on the state of our nation and what must be done to remedy the defects where they occur. The authority of a Royal Commission is understood by all and its findings would be widely accepted across the nation. Politicians would ignore it at their peril.

I have my own thoughts including acute social deprivation, the incidence (and influence?) of violence in the media and what I see as a lack of “social restraint” because our villages and other communities are much less close-knit than they were fifty years ago when “everyone knew everyone else.”

Violence that shocks the nation has always occurred in the United Kingdom – a couple of generations or so ago, there was Brady and Hindley, Mary Bell and, at the adult level, the Krays and the Richardsons. What is happening these days, though, seems to me to be a “step-change” from what happened thirty, forty and fifty years ago. We need to know what is happening, and why.

Some may say that Royal Commissions take too much time to conduct their business. However, two or three years is just the equivalent of a blinking eyelid when compared with the future.

We need that Royal Commission.