(CBS) Letter from London is Larry Miller's weekly look at news from across the pond.

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Last year a record number of Britons left this island for a better life somewhere else. Nearly 200,000 upped stakes, with Australia, Spain, the U.S. and Canada the top destinations.

It's not just the weather they're escaping. In many cases, they're tired of crossing to the other side of the street when faced with a group of teens. Gang crime and knife and gun killings have become an everyday headline.

The other night an 11-year-old boy, Rhys Jones, was shot to death playing soccer in a parking lot. It was a ride-by shooting — the killer fired from his bicycle.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown called it "a heinous crime which has shocked the country."

Shocked? Not really, because it's become too commonplace. In the last couple months, we've got to know the names of James Smart-Ford, Michael Dosunmu, Jessie James, Billy Cox and Sam Brown — all 16 or younger, and all murdered.

Last week a father of three who confronted a group of threatening teens was stomped to death. The same thing happened to another father, but he was luckier, spending just five days in intensive care.

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There are many more cases of course, and each time, the politicians throw their hands into the air and call it a 'heinous crime,' or some variation.

After young Rhys, seen at left in a family photo, was gunned down, a cabinet meeting was called. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith emerged saying she knows how to "nip in the bud the disorder which blights people's lives."

Her solution is something called Acceptable Behavior Contracts, or ABCs. These are voluntary written agreements between a person involved in anti-social behavior and the authorities, in which a promise is made to stay out of trouble. Twenty-five-thousand have already signed them, and Smith wants to get another 100,000 signatures. That'll make the streets safer.

The other day my 16-year-old daughter told me what happened to some of her friends. One afternoon a half a dozen of them were sitting in a local park, when a 14-year-old they knew ordered them to empty their pockets and hand over money, cell phones and iPods, as his 19-year-old back-up watched menacingly a short distance away. One youngster was a bit slow and he ended up with a bloody split lip.

None of the kids reported the incident, nor even told their parents, because, they say, "The police won't do anything, and even if they did, he wouldn't go to jail, just get a telling-off from the youth court, and then he'd come after us. He knows where we live."

This reluctance to confront is becoming more widespread. One of Britain's top radio personalities admitted he did not go to someone's aid and felt guilty. But at least he was alive to do the next day's show.

The head of a victims' support group says, "The public, police, government and judiciary all blame each other. We have got to wake up and work together to take back the cities, towns and villages... or these senseless child murders will become the norm."

That will take a lot more than getting a violent, anti-social kid to sign an ABC, so get ready to take thousands more British emigrants — they are already packing.

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