MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th May, 2019) The rising knife crime trend in the United Kingdom is linked to UK government budget cuts to youth service programs, the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Knife Crime said in a report on Tuesday.
"Analysis of council youth service budgets and knife crime data since 2014 has found areas suffering the largest cuts to spending on young people have seen bigger increases in knife crime," the report said.
According to the report, in the past three years, local UK governments had cut youth service program funding by at least 40 percent, with some reaching up to 91 percent.
Over the same period, a 68 percent increase in committed knife offenses was reported throughout England and Wales, the group said, citing statistics from UK police crime reports.
APPG parliamentary members urged the UK government to consider the statistics and to make appropriate adjustments to policy, including setting up legal requirements for councils to provide certain youth services.
The APPG was set up in 2017 in an effort to develop cross-party approaches to tackle knife crime in the United Kingdom. It is composed of over 40 members of the UK Parliament.
On Tuesday, UK opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said that the United Kingdom's decade-long austerity program designed to trim government spending in various public sectors was responsible for the country's rising knife crime rates.
"Austerity has created the conditions in which crime thrives. A whole generation of young people are paying the price," Corbyn tweeted.
The United Kingdom's rising knife crime rates have been in the public spotlight over the past few months. Lawmakers have blamed UK Prime Minister Theresa May's public funding cuts, which have led to a reduction in police numbers, for the trend. May has denied that there is a connection between the cutbacks and increasing knife crime.
