Guest blog by Scott Bartle
Friday 13th was
an eventful day as it was in the morning that David Cameron explained how he’d
worked ‘hand in glove’ with the USA to execute Mohammed Emwazi in Syria, where
we are not ‘at war’. This was a man that walked the same streets as us in
Brent, perhaps buying food from the same checkouts and was described by those
that knew him as a ‘nice guy’ before adopting the moniker ‘Jihadi-John’.
Meanwhile, in the afternoon over at Woolwich Crown Court 19 year old Yahya
Rashid from Willesden who had left the country to join ISIS was found guilty of
terrorism charges. As the guilty verdict was given to Yahya, in France final
preparations were being made by ISIS to attack Paris. After the mass-murders
French Gendarme conveniently found a passport upon a perpetrator matching one
shown by someone who identified as a refugee in Greece. However, other reports
from the media indicate that the majority of others involved in the Paris
attacks were more like Yahya Rashid, considered ‘home-grown’.
It’s
beyond most of our capacity to do anything about a foreign policy so reliant
upon fossil fuels we’ve contributed towards conflict over its supply since WW1.
From the Baghdad Railway, to the overthrow of democratically elected Prime
Minister Mohammad Mossaddegh of Iran in 1953 to the wars in Iraq and the funding
of ISIS to topple President Assad in Syria, it can feel pretty stuck. However,
within our grasp we do have the power to offer alternatives to people from
our communities who may be leaving our communities to get involved with ISIS.
We must recognise that ISIS is merely a gang for those in a multi-cultural
world who are better connected.
The myth
of the ‘five star jihad’ is pervasive as recruits like those from Birmingham
leave clutching their copies of ‘Islam for Dummies’ from Amazon. On social
media images are posted of a hiphop lifestyle of five-star hotels, hanging with
their friends, driving smart cars offering a perception that there will be more
opportunities with the ladies. This is the allure of stuff, people looking for
material things, love or a sense of community and belonging. These are
life-goals shared by many that people have become disaffected in their ability
to reach, and see joining ISIS as a more achievable way to meet their needs.
What to do about these things hasn’t changed since 1936 when Winifred Holtby
highlighted Local Government as the ‘first-line of defence thrown up by
the community against our common enemies – poverty, sickness, ignorance,
isolation, mental derangement and social maladjusment’.
What’s changed
is the ability of our elected representatives to recognise this and that cuts
in the short term equate to costs – both financially and socially in the long
term.
More
often than not adults who make choices to get involved with crime have had behaviour
considered ‘anti-social’ or ‘challenging’ since childhood. Research aggregated
by Professor Martin Knapp of the London School of Economics estimated that the
cost of conduct related crime in England to range from £22.5bn to £60bn a year,
and £1.1-1.9m over the lifetime of a single offender.
These costs on the public
sector are distributed across many agencies and are around 10 times high than
children with no behaviour problems. Yet research has found that gross savings
over 25 years from an intervention provided from services can exceed the
average cost of the intervention by a factor of around 8 – 1. We need to
recognise that despite this money being spread across many agencies it is still
our tax money that is being lost. Local Government needs to recognise it’s
likely to be around for ever and start operating on long term plans. As last
month’s decision by the Labour run council to engage in ‘savage’
short-sighted cuts to youth services See LINK or destroying
places like Stonebridge Adventure Playground could cost us all dearly.
Scott Bartle stood as The Green Party
Parliamentary Candidate for Brent North in 2015 and is a behaviour psychologist
who works in forensic services.
