Knife culture stalks Britain’s streets

LONDON – A teenager lies in a pool of blood in the street after he is stabbed in a dawn attack.

A day later, a father of three is knifed to death in front of his daughters in a struggle with a neighbour after a family fun day. A mother mourns her 19-year-old son, Thomas Grant, who was stabbed through the heart as he tried to stop a fight on a train.Children lay flowers at the school gates where Kiyan Prince, a promising footballer aged 15, died in a knife attack.Britain is living “in the shadow of the knife”, as one tabloid headline writer put it.And experts fear the number of fatal stabbings will spiral out of control if a growing knife culture among young people is not tackled.’WAR ON OUR STREETS’”We’ve got a war on our streets … and the trend for violence is getting worse,” says Lyn Costello of the campaign group Mothers Against Murder And Aggression (MAMAA).Figures show that six per cent of all violent crimes in Britain are knife-related.More than a quarter of the 820 homicides in 2004-5 involved sharp instruments, and in London alone, there were more than 12 500 knife-related incidents last year.The peak age for knife crime is 15 to 18 years.Data shows 41 per cent of those accused of robbery using a knife were in this age bracket, as were 17 per cent of the victims.AMNESTYExperts blame the emergence of a youth culture where violence is endemic and where parents find it hard to restrict their children’s exposure.”The underlying issue is inner-city youth culture,” says Diane Abbott, a Labour member of parliament in north London.”Young children grow up in a society where the music, the video games and the films are all saturated with violence.”As Britons are bombarded with headline after headline about lethal stabbings, there are plans for US-style school gate searches to stop children taking knives into class, and the government has announced a five-week national knife amnesty to encourage people to hand in weapons without fear of prosecution.Posters warn people to “turn in that knife before it’s turned on you”.Police hope to get thousands of weapons off the streets before the amnesty – the first in Britain for 10 years – ends on June 30.”Too many people think that carrying a knife will make them safer, but the reality is quite the opposite,” said Vernon Coaker, junior interior minister, as he launched the campaign.”They run the real risk of having the knife turned back on them.”But experts say trying to get knives off the street will have little effect.”It’s a cultural problem.It’s not just something the police can deal with.It is a much wider and more complex issue,” said Hannah Gardiner, spokeswoman for the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).Dr Marian Fitzgerald, a criminologist and professor at the University of Kent in the south of England, agrees the amnesty will achieve little on its own.”The amnesty is not going to stop knife crime,” she told Reuters.”It’s intended to be awareness-raising rather than an end in itself.”SELF PROTECTION”The reality is that most of the victims of young people are other young people,” said Fitzgerald, who has worked with the government’s Home Office and with the Youth Justice Board.”We also have to make sure that other young people feel that their fears of crime are being taken seriously and are being addressed,” she said.As the law stands now, carrying a bladed article in a public place “without good reason or lawful excuse” can lead to up to two years in prison in Britain.But campaigners and the families of victims of knife attacks say this sentence is nowhere near tough enough.They want long mandatory jail sentences for anyone caught carrying a knife.MAMAA’s Costello wants to see more effort being made to educate children about the dangers of carrying weapons, but insists that tougher enforcement of the law and longer jail sentences must be brought in alongside that.”This isn’t really about knives.This is about violence.Even if we took every knife out of the country, the ones who want to be violent would find something else – a broken bottle, a baseball bat, a house brick,” she says.”What we have to do is teach our children that violence is not acceptable in our society.That means a mass education programme.And if they don’t listen to that …they have to face up to a five-year sentence.”Britain’s most senior police officer, Scotland Yard Commissioner Ian Blair, backs tough mandatory sentences, saying it is the only way to get on top of the problem.But Fitzgerald describes the idea as “barmy” and warns that a headline-grabbing gut reaction could be counterproductive.”You can go for these draconian options, but actually the questions that we need to ask are whether they address the real issues and are they going to work …and I’m not sure that the answer would be yes.”- Nampa-ReutersA mother mourns her 19-year-old son, Thomas Grant, who was stabbed through the heart as he tried to stop a fight on a train.Children lay flowers at the school gates where Kiyan Prince, a promising footballer aged 15, died in a knife attack.Britain is living “in the shadow of the knife”, as one tabloid headline writer put it.And experts fear the number of fatal stabbings will spiral out of control if a growing knife culture among young people is not tackled.’WAR ON OUR STREETS’ “We’ve got a war on our streets … and the trend for violence is getting worse,” says Lyn Costello of the campaign group Mothers Against Murder And Aggression (MAMAA).Figures show that six per cent of all violent crimes in Britain are knife-related.More than a quarter of the 820 homicides in 2004-5 involved sharp instruments, and in London alone, there were more than 12 500 knife-related incidents last year.The peak age for knife crime is 15 to 18 years.Data shows 41 per cent of those accused of robbery using a knife were in this age bracket, as were 17 per cent of the victims.AMNESTY Experts blame the emergence of a youth culture where violence is endemic and where parents find it hard to restrict their children’s exposure.”The underlying issue is inner-city youth culture,” says Diane Abbott, a Labour member of parliament in north London.”Young children grow up in a society where the music, the video games and the films are all saturated with violence.”As Britons are bombarded with headline after headline about lethal stabbings, there are plans for US-style school gate searches to stop children taking knives into class, and the government has announced a five-week national knife amnesty to encourage people to hand in weapons without fear of prosecution.Posters warn people to “turn in that knife before it’s turned on you”.Police hope to get thousands of weapons off the streets before the amnesty – the first in Britain for 10 years – ends on June 30.”Too many people think that carrying a knife will make them safer, but the reality is quite the opposite,” said Vernon Coaker, junior interior minister, as he launched the campaign.”They run the real risk of having the knife turned back on them.”But experts say trying to get knives off the street will have little effect.”It’s a cultural problem.It’s not just something the police can deal with.It is a much wider and more complex issue,” said Hannah Gardiner, spokeswoman for the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).Dr Marian Fitzgerald, a criminologist and professor at the University of Kent in the south of England, agrees the amnesty will achieve little on its own.”The amnesty is not going to stop knife crime,” she told Reuters.”It’s intended to be awareness-raising rather than an end in itself.”SELF PROTECTION “The reality is that most of the victims of young people are other young people,” said Fitzgerald, who has worked with the government’s Home Office and with the Youth Justice Board.”We also have to make sure that other young people feel that their fears of crime are being taken seriously and are being addressed,” she said.As the law stands now, carrying a bladed article in a public place “without good reason or lawful excuse” can lead to up to two years in prison in Britain.But campaigners and the families of victims of knife attacks say this sentence is nowhere near tough enough.They want long mandatory jail sentences for anyone caught carrying a knife.MAMAA’s Costello wants to see more effort being made to educate children about the dangers of carrying weapons, but insists that tougher enforcement of the law and longer jail sentences must be brought in alongside that.”This isn’t really about knives.This is about violence.Even if we took every knife out of the country, the ones who want to be violent would find something else – a broken bottle, a baseball bat, a house brick,” she says.”What we have to do is teach our children that violence is not acceptable in our society.That means a mass education programme.And if they don’t listen to that …they have to face up to a five-year sentence.”Britain’s most senior police officer, Scotland Yard Commissioner Ian Blair, backs tough mandatory sentences, saying it is the only way to get on top of the problem.But Fitzgerald describes the idea as “barmy” and warns that a headline-grabbing gut reaction could be counterproductive.”You can go for these draconian options, but actually the questions that we need to ask are whether they address the real issues and are they going to work …and I’m not sure that the answer would be yes.”- Nampa-Reuters