Knife Victim From Essex Welcomes New Pilot
11 February 2019, 16:03
A man from Essex who was stabbed 11 years ago has told Heart a new pilot in London, which will see some knife offenders being tagged with GPS devices on their release from prison, is a "brilliant" idea.
The pilot is going to be run in four London boroughs to try to tackle violence.
Shane Yerrell, who now provides support for victims of violent crime thorugh his 'Through The Fight Foundation', told Heart "A lot of people that use weapons go on to re-offend after they come out of prison and not only that, some of them are just left to it and not monitored so I think it's a good thing... with the GPS system you can locate someone and so it will be easier to link them to a crime.
"The thing is if someone has been in prison previously and they're able to be tracked, I think that would then prevent them from doing anything like that again... because they know that they could be tracked."
Speaking about a rise in the number of knife crimes, Shane's put it down to cuts in police numbers. He added: "People are not as afraid as they used to be, a lot more people are carrying. At the end of the day, with policing being cut, it gives these offenders less fear and more reason to carry. I think that getting policing up again and back on the streets, that would sort a lot of things out."
