A professor with 20 years of experience working as a GP and five working as a prison psychiatrist has revealed his insight into increasing violence in young people.

Visiting professor at the University of Bolton, Bob Johnson, spent five years working as a prison psychiatrist at HMP Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight.

He has worked alongside more than 50 serial killers, exploring the reasons for their crimes.

He then went on to become a GP for 20 years, where he identified the long-term effects of child abuse and how the trauma from childhood develops throughout adulthood.

Speaking of young people, Dr Johnson notes an increase in “serious violence” coupled with a greater perceived acceptance of “extreme levels of violence” between children.

Professor Johnson said: “Violence is a medical disease, it's pathological and we need to urgently change the culture that surrounds it.”

In March 2023, first time entrants into the youth justice system increased for the first time in 10 years.

At the same time, proven offences were higher and sentences given to children at court saw an increase for the first time in 10 years, according to government figures.

Less than two months earlier, seventeen-year-old Axel Rudakubana was charged with the murder of three children at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport and will stand trial next year.

Last week, two 13-year-old boys were handed life terms with a minimum eight years and six months in custody for the murder of nineteen-year-old Shawn Seesahai in Wolverhampton.

Professor Johnson said: "This violence is a symptom that the country is sick, something isn’t quite working."

He added: “If you teach a child to be violent, unfortunately that’s what you get.

“When I worked in Parkhurst with serial killers they had been taught from a young age to be violent, they were taught to talk with their fists, it was all they knew.

“The majority of the killers had murdered a parental figure, or someone who had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“A lot of the destructive and violent things that these people had done, they didn’t even know why, they just knew that they harboured enough hate and turmoil to produce it.

“But there was always something driving them, they’d become accustomed to violence in childhood and were used to seeing violence as a remedy for various situations.

“There was one serial killer who I worked with, his mother had treated him like a child for all of his life. He couldn’t even say the phrase ‘mother, I am an adult’ out loud because he was so locked into his childhood. He couldn’t escape it.”

“Their mind goes blank; they lash out and then they go into denial.”

For much of the time, Professor Johnson notes, these learned behaviours stem from violent and abusive childhoods in which violence functions as a remedy.

To reduce the violence in young people, he adds, it is important to “take them out of their childhood” and “focus on re-education".

He added: “Violence is a medical disease, but it's curable and it has a cure.

“Putting a violent criminal into an inherently violent prison system is like putting an animal into the wilderness – it doesn’t address the root of the problem.

“People make money from violence, hate mongers on social media stir up violence but a violence-free, hate-free world is possible if we start asking the right questions in childhood, questions that are too painful to address later on in life.

“You must be a strong and safe pillar when dealing with a child who has dealt with abuse, if you’re not strong, the trauma will win.

“They’ve learnt through childhood that any person of strength is dangerous – they need guidance from someone powerful, but not dangerous.”

Hate, Professor Johnson adds, is marketable as “it drives the market and people buy into it".

“A lot of the rioters weren’t rioting for Southport” he said, “they were burning down mosques and attacking people, the killings have nothing to do with religion or immigration – that is spurred on by hatred from social media.

“The people who get up in the night to put the fires out, the people who re-built mosques and protect these places. These are the people that need encouraging, they are saving civilisation.

“There is no point trying to get revenge – it doesn’t address the root of the problem.

“If you want civilisation, you must work for it.”

Professor Johnson’s book,‘Friendless Childhoods Explain War’ is now available to buy.