“This is a complex crime and you cannot arrest your way out of it,” said Amber Rudd this morning on Radio 4’s Today programme, as she talked about the rise in knife crime in young people in London.

I couldn’t agree more that arresting our way out of this is not the answer. But then what is? The rise of violent crime in London’s youth is complex, although sadly not surprising.

The impact of the policy of austerity on young people should not be under-estimated. Cuts to services have been brutal and chronic. Cuts to education maintenance allowance, to social service provision, to youth services such as career advice centres and voluntary sector project groups, to mentoring schemes, to child and adolescent mental health services…  the list is long. These cuts have accompanied the reductions in police numbers which are more highly reported, yet not necessarily more important.

The context that we are raising young people in is one where there are fewer and fewer resources to help them with their education, wellbeing, safety, and emotional understanding, and at the same time one where more and more is being expected of them. More frequent exams, negotiation of digital social landscapes, employment hunting in a world with fewer jobs and more expensive university fees… The environment we have created is one where there is not enough to go round, where there is huge pressure on the individual, and one in which the backdrop of “adult” discussion on the news is routinely of war and violence.

Subsequent discussion on radio 4 this morning mooted the usual suspects: the idea that we could blame knife crime on violent lyrics, or on social media. I’m surprised video games didn’t get a bit of a look in too. Of course it isn’t this simple, and of course we have more responsibility.

In the clinical settings I have worked in the violence I have witnessed has often been related to fear: a fear of being hurt, of not knowing what will happen next, of being out of control, of not knowing who to trust. Training on managing situations where someone is likely to be violent included making sure that they had a way out of the room: that they didn’t feel trapped.

What ways out are we giving young people? How are we helping them with the people and things that they are afraid of?

This problem is complex, and there is also lots more we could be doing to unpick it. The under-funding of key services mean we are raising a generation with fewer opportunities and under greater pressure. It is hard to statistically model the effects of all of the different ingredients of this cocktail, although it’s important to try, but in the absence of a clear cause of rising youth violence, I think we could be doing more to call out the common sense explanations and to do something about these. Looking at police capacity to be present is one thing, and likely important, but we can go much further than this – and look at how to increase the numbers of youth workers, youth services and youth opportunities that are available.