Apparently there is only one Dominic D’Souza! A heart warming message from a grateful client. It is these moments that make the job worthwhile!

 

Teen murders and teen murderers, how do we kill this crisis?

 Teen Murders in the UK: A Deepening Crisis and the new KKK.

Introduction

The rise in teenage murders in the UK has become a critical issue, highlighting the growing dangers faced by young people, particularly in urban areas. While overall crime rates have fluctuated, youth homicides—especially knife-related killings—have steadily increased over the past decade. I was called to the Bar in 1993.  In those early days of my practice it was rare to receive a brief to defend a murder case.  So rare in fact, that I could not help my pulse racing when reading the indictment…..MURDER contrary to Common Law.  But that was 30 years ago.  And none of those murder cases I defended back then involved teenage victims or defendants.  Sadly the world is a vastly different place today and I have lost count of the number of teenage defendants I have represented in murder cases, shootings and stabbings over the last ten years.  Tragically most of these cases have involved teenage victims; young men who were all but boys, dead before they could even start their journey through life.  Why are kids killing kids? The issues are complex, and go beyond those involving gang violence, social deprivation, exploitation, and failures in policing .
In this article I attempt to define the scope of the crisis and to provide an insight into it’s root causes.  For perspective I mention a number of relevant cases and finally I venture an opinion as to the effectiveness of current strategies to combat KKK – Kid on Kid Killing.

The Scale of the Problem

Teen homicides in the UK have reached concerning levels, particularly in London and other major cities such as Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool. Statistics reveal that a significant proportion of teenage murders involve knives, with stabbings being the most common cause of death.

Key Statistics

- In 2021, the UK recorded its highest number of teenage homicides in over a decade, with 30 teenagers murdered in London alone.
- In England and Wales, 40% of homicide victims aged 13-19 were killed with a knife or sharp instrument in recent years.
- The vast majority of teenage murder victims are male, and many are from Black and ethnic minority backgrounds, particularly in inner-city areas.
- Teenagers are not just victims but also perpetrators, with many killings being carried out by other young people.

Root Causes of Teenage Murders

Knife Crime and the Normalisation of Weapons

Knife crime has become a major driver of teen murders. Many young people carry knives for protection, but this increases the likelihood of violent encounters turning fatal. Some key reasons behind the rise in knife-carrying among youth include fear, peer pressure, social media influence, and easy access to knives.  There have been a number of reviews in relation to sentencing policy for offences of knife possession in a public place but harsher sentences have done little to deter those who wish to go about their day armed with a lethal blade.  Most recently ‘zombie knives’ have been outlawed for sale in the UK, quite sensibly as it seems to me that their only purpose could be to maim or kill.  However, as I write this article a cursory search of the internet and a scroll through Tik Tok reveals how easily these dangerous weapons can still be purchased.  In fact there are sales not only of zombies but flick knives, stiletto knives, lock knives, hunting knives, knuckle knives and a dizzying array of other assorted weapons for assault.  Our government’s response to this online problem has been singularly parlous.  I cannot understand why the government cannot make sales of assault knives to any UK purchaser by any online platform illegal.  If not a criminal offence, punitive fines could be levied for any breach of the prohibition.  I appreciate that this type of restriction would require the assistance of any hosting platform – such as Facebook, Tik Tok, Amazon, Ebay etc – but those are just hurdles that I believe our government should surmount in the creation of a comprehensive policy in relation to assault knives.  I note that although gun sales are more common in the US than car sales, here in the UK you would have to delve into the Dark Web to find a single gun for sale.  Why?  Because it is illegal to sell firearms in the UK.  Surely it can be made equally impossible to obtain knives manufactured only for assault if our government spent more time formulating a policy about this important issue?

Gang Culture and Territorial Conflicts

Gang involvement is a significant factor in many teen murders. Gangs often recruit vulnerable young people, using them for drug trafficking, violent enforcement, and other criminal activities. The rise of 'postcode wars' has led to deadly clashes between young people simply for being in the wrong place.  The majority of the murder cases I have defended over the last decade have been gang related and you need only go down to the Old Bailey on any given day to see that at least one of the courts is occupied in a gang related murder case.  Gang related violence is not just a territorial issue. There has been a marked reluctance in both legal and political circles to address what are clear cultural factors pertaining to gang culture.  In my own practice, the overwhelming majority of gang murders or gang violence that I defend involve black defendants and only to a slightly lesser extent, black victims.  This racial demographic is particularly apposite in our cities – London, Birmingham, and Nottingham where black youth gang culture is most evident – but also in Manchester, Liverpool and parts of the North East.

County Lines and Criminal Exploitation

The county lines drug trade often utilises children by exploiting their vulnerabilities, and this has contributed to the rise in teen murders outside our main cities.  County Lines drugs operations have expanded the presence of gang activity from the cities to the smaller towns where there is still a market for recreational drugs such as crack, cocaine, heroin or Ketamine.   Young people who become involved in drug trafficking are at high risk of violence, either from rival gangs or their own leaders if they fail to comply with the demands of the Organised Crime Group to which they belong.  As a result there has been a substantial increase in drug related violent crime in towns and villages that was unheard of only a decade ago.  From my own perspective and having defended a number of County Lines cases I can say this:  these are complicated cases that are difficult to investigate and thereafter prosecute.  My own view is that in this particular area the police are doing an excellent job in identifying and thereafter prosecuting county lines cases.  In this regard the police are greatly assisted by expert evidence from telecommunications professionals who are getting better and better at presenting complex data in jury friendly formats.

The Role of Social Media in Escalating Violence

Social media has become a key factor in youth violence, with online disputes often leading to real-world attacks. Platforms like Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok are used to spread threats, public humiliation, and violent content, fueling cycles of retaliation.  The use of social media by our school children is something that is trending presently in the UK.   A number of schools have implemented bans on social media use and it is a matter of debate whether to impose an age limit of 16 plus as a requirement for subscription to any social media platform.  I note that Australia have recently implemented such restrictions nationally.  In my own practice I have been shocked at the pernicious effect social media platforms have had in many of the cases I have defended.  I have seen gang related group violence arranged by tweet, instagram, snapchat and Facebook.  Misinformation is often circulated virally resulting in tragic consequences that should never have come to pass but for the ‘fake news’ sent around groups of teenagers who are glued to any developments in the drama of the day.  YouTube is often a repository of ‘drill videos’ in which gangs rap about what they have done to their enemies, or otherwise humiliating their rivals.  I have been surprised in the cases I have defended how prevalent these drill videos are in the lives of young teenagers who follow such artists.  Drill videos often glamorize gang culture, drug dealing, violence and murder.  They project an image of fast cars, designer clothes and piles of cash.  These videos are a dreadful and worrying influence on teenagers who watch them.

Andrew Tate’s Influence on Young Men and Its Connection to Teen Violence

Andrew Tate, a former kickboxer and social media personality, has become a polarizing figure in discussions about masculinity, youth culture, and violence. His messaging often includes hyper-masculinity, anti-establishment rhetoric, rejection of weakness, and encouragement of dominance. While he does not explicitly promote violence, his ideology can reinforce toxic behaviors that contribute to youth crime.  However, in my view Tate has been unfairly singled out in any assertion that there is a correlation between his philosophy and teen murder in the UK.  It may well be that Tate’s philosophies of life are repugnant to most of us who have any moral compass.  However, the views that he espouses relate primarily to the status of men over women.  Unlike the drill videos I have discussed above, nothing Tate says glorifies KKK.  Indeed, the KKK problem existed long before Tate became an internet influencer.  I do however accept that influencers who put out msyogynistic content contribute to the landscape inhabited by a young teen veering towards violence.  In a cultural context, black young men often refer to their partners as their ‘bitch’ or their ‘hoe’. The term ‘baby mother’ originated in the black community and although these derogatory labels have now crossed cultural divides they are considered more prevalent in the young black community particularly that asssociated with criminality.

In my view there are countless individuals who, in the age of the internet, have ready access to those vulnerable and impressionable teenagers influenced by harmful content.  It is unfortunately all but impossible to police this content let alone seek to manage it for a whole host of reasons such as free speech or artistic expression in a democratic society. 

Notable Teen Murder Cases and Their Impact

1. Jaden Moodie (2019)

Jaden, a 14-year-old from London, was knocked off his moped and repeatedly stabbed in a gang-related killing. He had been recruited by a county lines gang, despite his young age. His murder highlighted the dangers of youth exploitation and the need for early intervention

2. Keon Lincoln (2021)

Keon, a 15-year-old from Birmingham, was attacked by a group of teenage boys who shot and stabbed him in broad daylight. His murder, caught on CCTV, shocked the nation and raised concerns about the increasing brutality of youth violence.

3. Yousef Makki (2019)

Yousef, a 17-year-old from Manchester, was stabbed by a friend during an argument. Unlike many other cases, this was not gang-related, but it demonstrated how knife crime affects young people across different backgrounds.

These cases illustrate the devastating human cost of youth violence and the urgent need for solutions.

Government and Community Responses

1. Tougher Laws and Sentencing

• Longer prison sentences for those caught carrying knives or involved in gang-related violence.

• New laws targeting county lines networks, making it easier to prosecute gang leaders who exploit children.

2. Stop-and-Search Measures

• Increased use of stop-and-search in high-crime areas, leading to more weapon seizures.

• Controversial due to concerns over racial profiling and community alienation.

3. Youth Violence Prevention Programs

• The Ben Kinsella Trust and Lives Not Knives educate young people about the dangers of knife crime.

• Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) in cities like London and Glasgow take a public health approach, focusing on prevention rather than just policing.

4. Investment in Youth Services

• Calls for more funding for youth centers and mentorship programs to give young people alternatives to crime.

• Greater emphasis on mental health support for vulnerable youth.

5. Community Policing and Public Engagement

• Building trust between police and communities to encourage cooperation.

• Greater focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment for first-time offenders.

Conclusion: A Crisis That Requires Urgent Action

The rising number of teenage murders in the UK is a national crisis that demands immediate attention. While tougher laws and policing measures play a role, they are not enough on their own. A long-term solution requires investing in education, employment, and youth services, early intervention, and community-led initiatives to rebuild trust and provide support. Without significant changes, more young lives will continue to be lost to violence.

Apparently I have sparked a debate!…….

Top barrister sparks debate about defending the guilty…

A barrister’s wig in the UK criminal courts…Dominic D’Souza explains our Victorian dress and the purposes behind it!

Unconscious bias….white elephant and black sheep. Does racism influence today’s criminal trial?

 

My January clip, dealing with a spectrum of matters both personal and professional….

My January missive 

A happy new year to all.  I have been thinking over the festive period about the bar, its precarious state, our vocation, our calling and other matters that might send you to sleep!!!

Kind regards, 

Dominic D’Souza 

Memoirs of a criminal barrister…..an interview with Dominic D’Souza

Dominic D’Souza talks for an hour about his start in law and some of his notable cases

 Dominic D’Souza interviewed about his life in law

My life in law…

 I’m being interviewed by Law Simplified for their podcast. See the above promotional poster if you feel like hearing about my years as a criminal defence barrister. 

How I might invest a jury with a concern for my client......a sample closing speech by Dominic D’Souza

 

The M word

The M word.  Murder.  I remember that when I started my career as a barrister, murder was such a rarity that to be briefed in a murder case was something that caused a professional racing of the heart.  Just to read an indictment accusing a client of MURDER was a cause of professional excitement and anxiety in equal measure.  In those days murder cases had something of an etheral feeling to them...somehow not quite real.

That was 25 years ago.  Now things are different.  Utterly different and completely divorced from the unwritten code that regulated criminality a quarter century ago.  Those 'old school' gangland bosses I used to know so well are either dead or serving long sentences.  The new generation of serious organised crime members don't seem to have a code at all.  At least not one that I understand.

I have just finished a long case in Manchester involving an organised crime group called The A Team and the essence of the Prosecution case was that the attempted murders being tried were part of a series of tit for tat murders between rival gangs in Salford.  Having finished the case, I found myself reflecting on violent crime today and how it is so different from that which prevailed when I came to the Bar.  In those early days, even the most feared of criminals had a sense of the sancity of life and a reluctance to kill, certainly to kill indiscriminately.  The Krays (one of whom was defended by Sir Ivan Lawrence formerly of my chambers) traded on the fear of violence no doubt, but murder was a last resort.  I have defended more murders in the last three years than the Krays could possibly have committed.  Murders committed for the most trivial of motives - disrespect being foremost amongst them.  These days to say something derogatory about a man could have you shot or killed.  To 'diss' a rival is to invite a threat to your life.  Indeed, the Drill rap music banned by many websites lyrically details what murderous plans the 'dissed' has for the 'disser'.  Most of the defendants I have represented in gang related murders are in their early twenties or in their teens.  Lives more concerned with dying than living. I have no doubt that those young lives - whether I have seen them acquitted or convicted are damaged beyond the scars left by gunfire or knifings.  Those lives are already a parody of death in that the kill or be killed ethos of street crime today trumps death over life.  Indeed for many young men involved in organised crime life is considered no more than a stepping stone to death.

The prevalence of knife crime in our cities is something that even I have not become inured to despite my being exposed to it in the numerous cases I defend.  I still find it shocking that the smallest disagreement, the most inconsequential spat can result in the snuffing out of a life at the point of a blade.  So pointlessly.  Gun crime too is at unprecedented levels, with firearms seemingly available to any criminal determined to obtain them.  Although it is well documented that a single gun can, over its lifetime, be used to take life time and again, I have yet to be involved in an arms importation trial. Come to think of it, I don't even know a colleague who has been involved in such a trial himself.  Policing has completely failed in tackling the importation into this country of handguns, most of which originate from Eastern Europe, manufactured during civil conflicts within those countries.  The millions spent on investigating and prosecuting drug related crime no doubt has its policy merits, but the fight against drugs is a losing battle.  Worse, far worse is losing a life.  A battle we really cannot ever accept we are losing.

So what can be done about the senseless and almost casual way in which murder is committed in this new world gang culture?  It is axiomatic that there is no simple answer nor any single solution.  But any journey no matter how long starts with a single step.  And there are many steps we might consider taking.  Just as examples, it occurs to me that stop and search powers should be extended and utilised without fear of accusations of racial bias or any form of racial stereotyping.  Quite simply high risk neighbourhoods are high risk neighbourhoods regardless of ethnicity.  Is it now so totally politically incorrect even to consider the ethnicity of, for example, killers and the killed in London?  A newspaper recently published photographs of all those young men and women murdered over the last year.  If you care to look at that montage you may come to conclusions of your own about aspects of this huge problem.  And it is indeed huge.  Our Mayor of London and MP's from all parties have conceded that London and our major cities are akin to war zones.  Certainly my view of Manchester, having finished my last gang related trial there is that such a description is apposite.  This has been the tag line of many an article by the Manchester Evening News.

So intensified stop and search is a start.  Next I wonder whether broader bases upon which police can secure warrants to secure enter and search homes might be a step in the right direction?  I appreciate that there is a correlation between increased police powers and consequent loss of rights to privacy and related protections.  But those who are not involved in serious organised crime have nothing to fear from such institutional invasion of privacy, and surely there must come a time when as a community we agree that we have crossed the rubicon, or passed the event horizon where the individual's right to privacy is acceptably and justifiably ameliorated by the need to get a handle on a spiralling murder rate.  Another possible step would be more proactive investigation and action upon intelligence.  The police, with all their resources and with all the advances in telecommunication technology receive huge amounts of intelligence on a daily basis.  The analysis of this intelligence is a key component in the prevention of serious crime.  Such analysis however requires skilled and trained personnel.  Sadly, rather than investing in our investigatory bodies, we are cutting resources and recruitment at a shocking level.  If you pay peanuts, I am given to understand you get monkeys.  How many prosecutions are reported weekly in the news that have collapsed as a result of police failings - in disclosure, investigation, or as a result of lack of training?  For my part, I would guess that 70% of the cases I defend involve my cross examining as to police misconduct, police failings, or police incompetence.  I pursue such avenues relentlessly, as I am bound to as a defence barrister.  But I take no pride in my ability to do so.  Nor do I glory in the countless acquittals I have secured through an attack on the investigation.  It is simply a fact of life at the defence Bar today.  Cases are routinely lost that should not be lost.  Killers are routinely back on the street to do what they do - kill - when they should not be.  The criminal Bar has seen its fees slashed to such a shocking extent, that this is almost criminal in itself.  I am led to believe that morale in the Crown Prosecution Service is almost as low as it is currently amongst defence lawyers.  And so those who police, prosecute and defend crime should be paid at a level commensurate with the importance of the rule of law to our nation, to our citizens, to our victims and to those wrongly accused.  There is simply nothing more destructive to life and liberty than crime just as there is simply nothing more destructive to life and liberty of those wrongly accused of it.  These are inviolable truths.  Successive governments have recklessly and perniciously eroded our system of justice, once the envy of the world.  The slashing of investment in the police and remuneration to those working in the courts is, to my mind, at the very least correlated in some way - directly or indirectly - to the deaths on our hands as a community.  Ergo my next putative step - invest in our legal system because, without meaning to be cynical, you get what you pay for.  Having devoted a quarter of a century to my calling, I have never been more disillusioned with the state of the Bar nor more concerned for its future and the futures of those who desperately seek to rely on it - whether victims or accused.

I began this rambling missive with the M word.  Murder.  And will end it with the most ardent prayer that our system of law is not killed off with the same indifference those poor young victims we read of in our newspapers.  If the public only knew of the frightening abyss into which our criminal justice system is teetering and had a sense of the calamity that would bring about, both law and lives might be saved.  Sadly, Joe Public is ill informed and understandably disinclined to invest in crime.  Until he finds himself involved in it.  But my dear Joe at that stage your concern would be like closing a door after the horse has bolted.  I could write endlessly about the state of our criminal justice system but at the risk of boring even myself let alone those inclined to read this post I will leave it here.  My last words are these....in the time it has taken me to write this post in all likelihood someone has been killed who might have lived.

My Chambers profile......

http://www.goldsmithchambers.com/barristers/dominic-dsouza/

You never know......

"How do you defend someone you think might be guilty?". My first trial gave me that answer...

Royal Ascot with Bark and Co solicitors

Going for Gold

www.goldsmithchambers.com/dominic-dsouza

I am excited to be re - joining Goldsmith Chambers in the New Year (see link to my chambers profile above) and it looks like it will be a busy year for me already!

Knowing the cost of each vocation but the value of none

Junior doctors should be supported in anger at what are proposed cuts to their income. But it reminds me that their London protest march is in respect of income drops that pale into insignificance compared to that which has been visited upon the Bar. The sacrifices made by those called to vocational life were once valued and of value to the very fabric of our community. No longer. Instead the lure of a Calling is now but a basis upon which the government believes we will maintain our professional standards and, in the face of the most draconian cuts, continue to give as selflessly as humanly possible to our cause. The government believe that regardless of slashed incomes no barrister would be less than 100% committed to his case; that no doctor would do less than 100% in saving a life. And the government is right because it is axiomatic that vocations are not jobs we choose. Rather we are chosen - or 'called'. But in slashing income and demoralising those tirelessly helping, in one way or another, each and every person in this country, the government might see a falling in Calling far more damaging to the society all vocations seek to protect, serve and preserve; there is no cost saving worth the cost of a lost life, the cost of a life lost to a miscarriage of justice. Great Britain's system of law, it's practice of medicine, it's excellence in teaching - these vocational callings were what made Britain great and by these pillars of civilisation we were the envy of the world. Now it seems better to practice elsewhere and many of our vocational graduates pursue callings abroad. I have read recently that even my former pupil 'Judge Rinder' is leaving for America! Its an irony that the way of this reality show might show reality the way. But who am I to judge?