Shabana Mahmood knows what it is like to live in an area where crime feels out of control. While she was growing up in Small Heath in inner-city Birmingham in the 1980s and 90s, her father kept a cricket bat behind the till of the family shop to fend off would-be robbers.
Three decades later, Mahmood is Labour’s justice secretary and lord chancellor, tasked with cutting crime at a time when public concern about it is rising.
