Increase in violent crime can be attributed to legal highs

The increase in violent crime can be blamed on legal high drugs, according to the government’s justice secretary.

Chris Grayling made the claim during a visit to the Essex city of Colchester on Tuesday. He said that he had been involved in a great deal of work regarding the increase in violent crime, particularly crime where the perpetrator used a knife, and he made a specific link between the increase and novel psychoactive substances, also known as legal highs.Mr Grayling explained: “They are easily accessible and I speak to police and the prison service. They say the same things, they are having a detrimental effect and causing more violence and people to lash out. I think it is part of the problem.”

There has been a ten-fold increase in Essex in four years in the number of criminal incidents that involved the taking of legal high drugs. Just 11 such incidents were recorded by police in 2010; this number rose to 125 during 2014. It is feared that the actual number of legal high-related crimes may be higher.Essex is not the only county to suffer from increased violent crime due to legal highs, with the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) registering a trebling of such crime throughout the UK. Its director, Christian Guy, claims that legal highs are putting extra pressure on public services and that action needs to be taken to stop their sale.