The church has a crucial role to play in putting a stop to gun and knife crime in the UK, says a leading criminologist.

Dr John Pitts told the Baptist Union’s Bite the Bullet conference on Saturday that gun and knife crime was affecting particularly young black people on deprived social housing estates.

“The world is very different for a black family than a white family,” said Dr Pitts, who directs the Vauxhall Centre for the Study of Crime.

He said, however, that many young people only joined gangs “reluctantly” and that it was not uncommon for young people to avoid going outside because of the pressure from local gangs to “rep [represent] their end”.

“Social and youth workers say they and parents feel powerless because of the lure of life in gangs,” he said.

Dr Pitts said there was a direct link between the global drugs trade “and what’s happening on our streets”, with many gang members involved in selling drugs and even non-gang members finding themselves in some way dependent on the drug trade.

“In some places drugs sustain families and that is a serious problem,” he said.

People living on the estates, he continued, were reluctant to report their activities to the police because of a longstanding distrust towards the authorities.

“Hostility to the police and authorities means that many people, while not condoning gangs, won’t go to the police … they feel blamed by police.”

Dr Pitts called for a political shift, saying that politicians in areas affected by gangs needed to start listening to the concerns of their constituencies.

He said local churches could act as a “bridge” between alienated communities and the politicians serving them.

Churches, he said, had a vital role to play in bringing about an end to gang-related crime because they were “available”.

“People in churches are there and they are there for the long haul,” he said. “The church can provide the personnel and the commitment. It is for the professionals to provide the support, the training and the money in some cases.”


Bite the Bullet was organised by the Baptist Union of Great Britain together with the Ascension Trust, the ministry behind Street Pastors.

The head of the Ascension Trust, the Rev Les Isaac, said he believed some young people were going to come the Bite the Bullet concert planned for that evening but “were petrified that if they come they are going to be robbed, jacked or knifed”.

“We have an enormous problem with young people in and outside of the church … It’s a real issue which we the church cannot afford to ignore today,” he said.

Rev Isaac said black Christians in particular had to get hold of the gun and knife crime issue “because we have our roots in these communities”.

“Part of the problem has been that the black church has become nice, decent, respectable, and kind of alienated itself from the grassroots of these communities,” he said.

“There is a call to us particularly as black Christians, with our white brothers and sisters, to reconnect with our grassroots communities … that we are going to spend some time there, that we are prepared to work with those guys on the estate, and to be part of the solutions rather than the problems,” he said.

Also at the conference was the General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, Jonathan Edwards.

He said the issue of gun and knife crime was an issue that had to be addressed by every single church, even those not directly affected by it.

“There’s always a temptation for churches to get into our buildings and shut the door and have a comfortable time together and protect one another from the nasty things happening outside,” he said. “Jesus didn’t do that. He called us to be involved and be salt and light in our communities. So these issues period belong to every local church.”

Mr Edwards reminded Christians of the need to love the people caught up in gangs with the same love as Jesus.

“The temptation is always to demonise and we want to say that Jesus died on the cross for every single person. And so we are praying for them” he said. “They may be dangerous, they may be violent, they may be reckless with all they’ve done with their lives, but we want to say things about their dignity before God, made in the image of God - we have a responsibility to them.”