Home Office unit to curb teenage violent crime

Teenagers have it "much, much harder" than previous generations because of knives, mental health pressures and social media, Yvette Cooper has said, announcing plans to set a new unit to prevent violent crime among young people

- Rowena Mason

In the aftermath of the deaths of young people in stabbings in Nottingham, Wolverhampton and Croydon, Cooper told the Guardian she was initiating a cross-government "young futures" unit to be based in the Home Office, as part of the ambition to halve violent crime in a decade.

She described the recent murders of three children in Southport as "deeply traumatic and just absolutely awful".

Speaking from a youth centre in the Manchester suburb of Gorton, Cooper said there were links between knife crime and poor treatment of mental health conditions, with the current state of provision causing "serious challenges".

As part of the push, the home secretary will tell councils and police forces they have until Christmas to have proposals in place to tackle crime among young people.

New guidelines to be in force by December will set out how networks of police, mental health professionals, local schools, youth offending teams and charities can work together to help steer teenagers away from crime. "It's always been tricky to go through the teenage years, but it feels like for 'generation alpha' it's got much, much harder," Cooper said.

"You've got the pressures from social media, county lines and child criminal exploitation, the rise in the antisocial behaviour that we've seen, and... pressures on child and adolescent mental health.