The homicide rate over the past ten years, which includes murder and manslaughter, has increased by some 16 percent, but last month the Chief Constable for the police force for the West Midlands, Dave Thompson, warned MPs that the increase would likely be even higher if emergency trauma care had not “significantly improved” in the intervening years.
“If we look back 10 years, we would probably see more homicides in some of the groups of attempt murders that we are seeing. I think it is remarkable what we are seeing people survive with,” he said — a suggestion borne out by research suggesting the establishment of major trauma networks supported by medical veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars, for example, had decreased deaths resulting from serious injury by as much as 50 per cent in 2015 alone.
Now an analysis of Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures by the opposition Labour Party has revealed that the number of attempted murders has indeed increased by an astonishing 99 percent between 2010-11 and last year, with over a thousand people now facing attempts on their lives, The Sun reports.
Even this may understate the reality of the situation, however, as many criminals who inflict potentially lethal injuries on their victims find themselves being charged with grievous bodily harm (GBH) and wounding with intent offences, rather than attempted murder.
Gang members in London, the hyper-diverse multicultural capital where much of the violence is centred, have cited mass migration, for example, with a British-born knife criminal telling the Evening Standard, “In the last 10 years, since the Somalis and the Congolese came to London, they taught us a whole new level of violence."
“It upped the speed and level of violence for us British-born guys. We had to arm up to protect ourselves. It created an upward spiral,” he explained.
Other criminals have revealed the weakness of the criminal justice system, particularly its reluctance to hand down lengthy prison sentences, are little deterrent.
