Harry’s Place

For a start, put it in context. As tragic as it is, even 18 in a year amounts only to relatively isolated incidents, when you consider that there are millions of young people in the capital.

Then stop twittering on about “community engagement” and building youth clubs. That’s utter crap. Kids carry knives because they think they’re cool, they think it makes them hard, and because they think it’ll make them safe. Not because they’re bored. They just need to learn the lesson that bringing a knife into a fight significantly escalates the sitaution, increases the chances of getting stabbed yourself (or getting your head caved in if you’re too afraid or incompetent to use it properly), and it’ll get them sent to jail for a long time. Also because stabbing people just isn’t cool.

How to do that last bit? I dunno, schools? That is what they’re there for, teaching people things.

President Clinton introduced federally-supported midnight basketball leagues. It’s been a runaway success.

According to Conservapedia, it’s obvious that your horribly repressive gun control in the UK is what’s leading to these knife murders. If people were free to carry around firearms, then everyone would be safe.

Caught carrying a knife? 10 years for a first offence. Use it to threaten someone? 15 years. Stab someone? 20 years. Kill someone? Hanging.

Do that and watch murder of teenagers plummet or wimp out and watch the toll rise and rise.

No one gets killed in America anymore.

To a youngster 10 years might as well be a life sentence - as a result your policy, Common Sense, may reduce the overall number of knives carried but would probably increase the number of stabbings and murder.

“How to do that last bit? I dunno, schools? That is what they’re there for, teaching people things.”

You don’t think it’s a bit late by then? That they should, maybe, learn this in the home…?

My solution would be to blame it on the middle classes.

Like this: ‘Kids are getting stabbed to death meanwhile there are people living in £2m houses nearby and walking their dogs on the common. I can’t help feeling there’s a connection…’

Isn’t that the Harry’s Place way?

Legalise concealed firearms.

I do wonder whether all the publicity accorded to knife crime in counter-productive. When I was a lad we trashed all the seats in the church hall when our local punk band played, because we read in the Sunday Mirror that’s what punks do . Now these gangsta-wannabees are being told they should carry a knife.

Another problem is that kids are allowed to get away with so much in the way of casual crime and vandalism they have no respect for the law whatsoever. “Tough on crime and the causes of crime” has not been delivered.

Kids are getting stabbed to death meanwhile there are people living in £2m houses nearby and walking their dogs on the common. I can’t help feeling there’s a connection…’
Isn’t that the Harry’s Place way?

No, I think you’ll find that’s The Guardian.

To be honest, I think there is an elephant in the room. The fact is that this rash of knife crime is a very recent thing, in the last ten years. When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, it was always said that only Italians and Maltese crried knifes, Brits fought with fisticuffs. There has been an influx of people into this county where knifes and violence are part of their culture. Britain always controlled access to violence. In the middle ages your body belonged to your feudal overlord and the king, so it was actually a crime to injure yourself and make yourself unfit for military service, it was the crime of mayhem. Yes, we’ve had our fair share of highwaymen and murderers, but due to our early industralisation and urbanisation, the British working class generally became disciplined in behaviour a hundred years ago. Unfortunately, the recent Britons haven’t lived through those experiences, and often come from countries that are ravenged by war and conflict. Is it any surprise that the chickens are now coming home to roost? (I hope that his doesn’t make me sound like a member of the BNP, but to solve a problem, one has to study it. Obviously any remedial action must be based on a clear analysis of underlying causes.).

I hope things have changed since I was at school but for some of my school teachers, getting into a fight was tacitly accepted as “character building”.

I don’t think it’s necessarily any more of a problem than it ever was, and is possibly just the latest moral panic. The statistics show that knife crime has fallen since 1995, and remained constant as a proportion of overall crime, but the statistics are unreliable because violent crime is very low so it’s hard to get meaningful data, and also because knife crime wasn’t reliably recorded as separate from ordinary violent crime in the past. The Met claims that since it has been properly separated, knife crime has been falling (over about 3 years).

As it is, the UK has very low murder rates, violent crime rates and crime by juveniles compared to most developed countries.

“I hope that his doesn’t make me sound like a member of the BNP”

I shouldn’t worry. To some people, ‘Good morning’ would be enough to make someone sound like a member of the BNP…

As it is, the UK has very low murder rates, violent crime rates and crime by juveniles compared to most developed countries.

Good for them. This American loves it when would-be robbers and murderers get their fucking heads blown off by law-abiding citizens.

Sue R - you’ve heard of Scotland, quite a lot of white working class (and still British) stabbing going on

I don’t think it’s necessarily any more of a problem than it ever was, and is possibly just the latest moral panic

I think you are right. In the wake of this panic, didn’t the BMA advocate that pointy knives should no longer be sold because there was ‘no reason’ for a knife to have a point and should have a rounded end instead? One can only assume that the BMA has never had to prepare a meal from raw ingredients if it can see no purpose for a knife to have a pointy end!

It’s Britain’s fast-growing yob culture, helped out so generously by the Labour government’s disastrous “educashon” policies (even worse than Thatcher’s and Major’s).

Furthermore, there are hardly any free places left for adolescents to exercise away aggression, thanks to Labour having flogged off most of the country’s school fields for private development.

One small part of a solution - it wouldn’t cure all of it, iis going to take a generation, a lot of it is macho posturing to the max - but one admittedy small step, would be to legalise weed for private consmption, not by having weed cafes but by allowing home cultivation. The govt can put a tax on seeds. In some areas taking the supply in that way from the gangsters would calm things down considerably and stop the feuding over markets - How to legalise coke and its derivatives is a harder problem but needs looking at too. People are going to do it whether it’s legal or not, and if it’s not legal they are going to war over control of the market and the users are going to stab and rob to raise money to buy.

Greg - Your point about 10 years is a good one and I wish I could remember the details of a previous example of precisely that effect that I heard on a Radio 4 programme a few months back.

Brownie - Showing kids that knife crime is a route to celebrity really won’t discourage them. I prefer the rounded kitchen knives idea.

Young people have too much power and don’t know how to use it. Ego’s the size of football pitches and do not know how to walk away, have never been taught how to stand down and still feel in control. Gigantic feelings of rage with no ability to understand consequences of your actions.

Many parents believe the moment their child has left the house at 8am they are no longer responsible for them until they arrive home, whenever that may be. The school believes they are responsible when they are on their property only. So in between they roam aimlessly. Youth clubs do not work in the modern sense, to much target driven group work. Why would you want to spend 3 hours making a poster on why sexism is bad with crisp packets when you could be out there……. because you may miss out on something big and you can’t risk that.

Do any of you know how long it takes the police in London to react? My daughter was threatened by some scooter riding fool. She had cut him in traffic up so he forced her to the kerb and was threatening to stab her. She locked the doors and windows and dialled 999.

Twenty five minutes later the cops still hadn’t arrived and the idiot rode off. This was in Fulham.

She took the license plate and apparently there are three registered riders and the Police advised her that it was “not worth pursuing”.

This is why kids carry knives. To protect themselves.

This isn’t an intellectual game, so get over all the “solutions” that require moral awareness or more social workers or more box-ticking by government or clever gestures by politicos.

Also try to avoid relying on statistics that say crime is falling, or if you like them go and talk to the families of dead and injured and scarred kids where you can explain things are really getting better, because statistics prove it.

I am not generally in favour of laws for temporary aberrations in human nature. Yet here is a very good case for some pretty draconian laws.

Carrying a knife is immediate, unconditional jail. There may be a lot of hand-wringing and emotional appeals to human rights but it has to be clear to everyone that by all means carry a concealed weapon if you like but there are consequences.

Like 10 years behind bars. A lifetime for the guilty? Well, not quite, but longer than some kids have found was available to them lately.

Murder can be dealt with existing laws, if you can catch the people who did it. But that is a different issue; let’s try to get the weapons off the street.

Bring back apprenticeships

Youth clubs that have sport facilities and that are open later and at weekends - to get rid of that excess energy. Youth workers who know how to stimulate and use challenging conversations whilst able to play basketball for example. Fund this by getting rid of Connexions as it only works for a very small percentage of young people

Zero tolerance from the police

Smokevote: “…if it’s not legal they are going to war over control of the market and the users are going to stab and rob to raise money to buy.”

Is there any indication that any of the recent high-profile cases had a link to the drugs trade? Most of them seem to have been trivial disputes escalating to murder by virtue of either a handy weapon or a total overkill in physical force.

Also try to avoid relying on statistics that say crime is falling

Well, if we’re going to avoid using statistics and use individual cases instead, I had a knife pulled on me twice in the 90s in London and not at all since 2000. Are you going to tell me things haven’t got better?

18 teenagers murdered this year in London is also a “statistic” - are you proposing we ignore that one as well?

Julia, I think there is though I haven’t got time just now to google he cases where the market in drugs is a factor. You can check out the Tottenham Somalis versus Camden Town Somalis case though and that may point you to others

It’s not rocket science:

1. Much tougher custodial sentences for use of knife crime.

2. Juveniles to be put in controlled confinement (i.e. in solitary, except for contact with approved staff, teachers etc - not unlike the Swiss system). This punishment to be used much earlier than traditionally custody has been used.

3. Banning use of mobile phones by persons convicted of knife crime for one year.

4. Repeat offenders (not just knife crime) to be taken out of the school system and their homes. Probably best to get them on board a ship where there will be military discipline, controlled environment, no bullying and plenty of interesting experiences.

5. Forget about stop and search except for known knife offenders.

6. Increased foot and bike patrols by Police on a 24 hour basis in all high risk areas.

7. A draconian law on conspiracy by gangs, outlawing oaths, secret signals, intimidation, criminal conspiracy etc. with leaders to be sentenced to life imprisonment where they do not disband the gangs or seek to reform them under other names.

Sue R - You’ve obviously never been to Glasgee.

somalians run charlton street, bengalis run drummond street. Too much weed = paranoia. I have seen to much of it here to be a coincidence

“She had cut him in traffic” unfortunate choice of words Stuart! The scooter twunt threatened her - and it should have been followed up by the Old Bill. He may have been a bit overheated though - I get a bit bolshy after someone has cut me up when I’m on the 750……

And I carry a knife nearly every day at work. Swiss Army, Huntsman. A vary handy device.

The point I was trying to make is that the police don’t come even while you are being threatened. The 999 operator asked what the banging sound was and was told that it was the boy banging on the car window while threatening to stab her. Still the cops did not come.

It would be nice if kids did not feel the need to carry a weapon for self defence but it is hard to argue that it is unneccessary. The Police cannot be relied on to respond. If my daughter had not locked her car she could well be dead.

The Celtic Nations (as a man on the lunchtime news) are different to England. Different history. I know knife crime is a longstanding problem in Glasgow, didn’t Frankie Vaughan go up there and appeal for calm back in the 60s? But, Glasgow was the only place in Britain that really had a gang culture until recently. The skinhead gangs of the 70s 80s weren’t so structured as the gangs appear to be nowadays. I personally think it has a lot to do with drugs, ie the right sell in a particular area. Also, a lot of these cultures ie Somali, African etc consider a boy a man at 12, so it always makes me laugh when some sanctimonious do-gooder comes on the wireless or telly saying that parents have to know what their children are getting up to.

SueR, some of the worst knife crime in the country is in all white parts of Glasgow, so I don’t think the foreign argument entirely holds up.

I watched a couple of ‘Disarming Britian’ programs last night on C4. The first was a drama about a black-on-black stabbing on a London estate, and the second a look at Glasgow’s gang/knife culture.

There are 170 gangs in Glasgow, about the same as London in a city 1/6th of the size.

I don’t think these kids are carrying knives to protect themselves. Stuart, is you daughter considering carrying a knife now? I’ll bet she isn’t. If knives were for self defense then the weakest, most vulnerable kids would be carrying them. The classic bullying victims. I really doubt that’s who’s carrying knives, its the kind who “don’t let anyone f*ck with them”, the bullies etc.

Prison prison prison prison prison…..

If you get caught with an illegal weapon in public, you go to prison.

If you use an illegal weapon against anyone, outside of the remit of self defence or defence of the public, you go to prison for even longer.

If you kill someone, outside of the remit of self defence or defence of the public, you go to prison for the rest of your natural life.

Oh, and we remove all the sentencing discretion of the judges. If we have to, we fire all the judges. They are the most amoral, abusive anti-democratic reactionary sods we ever set eyes upon. They hate the public like stink.

Short order cook says

“I don’t think it’s necessarily any more of a problem than it ever was, and is possibly just the latest moral panic. The statistics show that knife crime has fallen since 1995″

and

“As it is, the UK has very low murder rates, violent crime rates and crime by juveniles compared to most developed countries.”

Brownie says:

“watched a couple of ‘Disarming Britian’ programs last night on C4.”

It seems to me that Brownie bases his politics on overblown media scares, rather than what is happening in reality.

Hey Monty, why not force inner city teenagers to walk around naked, then they will have nowhere to hide knives. Of course they could attempt hiding knives up their arses, so we should put security cameras up every teen arse as well.

Perhaps we should use air strkes on neighbourhoods where this is happening, as a deterrant effect. I’m sure HP would love this solution.

If we had the same standards of medical technology as applied 50 years ago, we would be facing an absolutely horrendous murder rate in the UK. It is only the skill of doctors and medical science that saves so many .

But the point I would return to is we could quite easily solve this knife crime epidemic if we had the political, social and cultural will. We just don’t have that will power. In particular no one is even mentioning how to break up the gangs. But it is possible to challenge such groups that challenge the authority of the state if you are determined enough.

Aside from the complete impracticability of filling up our prisons til we reach the US stage of having a “prison industry” with a very significant proportion of the young males of certain ethnic groups “on lockdown” at any given time (yet further exacerbating the lack-of-male-figures problem, incidentally), it is very clear that most of the people who advocate prison and draconian laws have never spoken two words to a person under the age of 25 outside of their own social circle. Prison is not a deterrent. Not to a nihilistic, drug-fucked, peer-pressure-crazed youngster.

Neither is “breaking up gangs” - or certainly not the way most people seem to advocate it. There is far too much recognition given to “gangs”, which only goes to fuel the gangster fantasies of (mainly) stupid, angry, scared teenagers who love nothing more than for the “feds” (note how sexy they find the American cops’n'robbers model) to recognise their supposed affiliation. In actual fact any supposed “gang” consists only of a VERY few core members controlling the drug trade etc in a given estate or district, but there will also also hundreds of kids who like to puff their chests out and say they know the “bad man” (and of course it is very convenient to the real gangsters to be able to be camouflaged among a load of wannabes, and have willing recruits for menial work). The kids are not gangsters.

Draconian punishment will only turn these children into the gangsters that they so sorely want to be. The only thing that changes them is somehow relieving the constant pressure of being surrounded by violence. Sorry, Daily Mail people, but talking cures DO work, and taking kids on holidays works even better. Removed from their “ends” (estates) where every waking minute is spent thinking about boundaries and enmities and threats and “beefs”, these children are able to think rationally about why they do what they do and even eventually to begin to think about potential futures for themselves and their families where previously they thought they had none.

And Sue R, go to a Medway town - which are as violent as any London borough - and tell me that violence with weapons is down to the blacks and the paddies.

Oh, and we remove all the sentencing discretion of the judges. If we have to, we fire all the judges. They are the most amoral, abusive anti-democratic reactionary sods we ever set eyes upon. They hate the public like stink

So who do you think should decide on the sentence but the person who has heard all the evidence? Tabloid leader writers? Here today gone tomorrow politicians, with an eye on the main chance? You could have juries decide on the sentence but then you’d get massive inconsistency in sentencing. Judges work within the laws passed by Parliament and within the sentencing guidelines set by the Home ofiice, or is it the MoJ now? There are processes in place to ensure consistency in sentening and the CPS always has the option to appeal a sentence should it be too lenient. The fact that sentences are rarely appealed should indicate that judges are by and large passing sentences that Parliament and the government are in accord with. It’s a bit rich for Labourite shills to pass the blame onto the judges.

A classic case of politicial ends driving sentencing decisions, was the five year minimum sentence for possession of a prohibited firearms, that is to say section 5, rather than a section 1 or 2 firearm that may be lawfully owned on certificate. At the time, many people pointed out that it was unworkable, as there are many reasons why someone might come into possession of a prohibited weapon, and not all of those reasons deserved the full tariff. At the bottom end of the scale is the arms collector who imports an antique firearm that he thinks is legally exempted from certification but isn’t. An example would be the bus driver in Devon last year, who imported a Smith & Wesson 38 cal top-break revolver made in the 1880s, an antique under US law but is, technically at least, a prohibited weapon here. It was detected by customs and he got community service. And so you go through the scale until you get to gangsters in possession of machine guns with live ammunition, who merit rather longer tariffs than 5 years. Not surprisingly, judges have been passing many sentences below the ‘minimum’ tariff, citing ‘excpetional reasons’ and the dimbulb politicians who authorised the change in the law are hopping mad. But in most cases the sentence survives the review process and again it proves that ministers are the last people to make decisions about sentencing. You’d think that a government of lawyers would understand this.

Oh yes, and a practical solution? Legalise and license all illegal narcotics, prescribe clinical diamorphine to heroin addicts and dexedrine to crack addicts, and allow marijuana to be sold and regulated like alcohol. Remove the income and status from the REAL gangsters and see how many kids want to emulate them then.

Also, for those who think the “skinheads” of the 80s were neither organised nor that dangerous, I’m guessing you never experienced the genuine terror of riding on a train full of tooled-up football hooligans…

….the UK has very low murder rates, violent crime rates and crime by juveniles compared to most developed countries.
Short order cook.

It has only just been announced (last month) that the UK is to start recording under 16 crime statistics in the British Crime Survey - so the true extent of crime amongst under 16s is not currently part of official crime statistics. So how do you know it is lower among juveniles than in most developed countries? Also there has been the notorious reluctance of the police, in London at least, to record anything as a crime that involves juveniles unless they are nabbing one-person crime waves.

It’s true that various nationalities carry knives to defend themselves, not just Somalis and Yemenis but Finns too for example. But a lot of the knife crime in the UK seems to be committed by young people who do not care about anyone’s life, theirs or anyone else’s, all they care about is not getting dissed.

Mr Ben’s job regularlytakes him to Camden in NW London in the evenings and he has formed the impression that the root cause of a lot of the trouble which kicks off there, is turf wars over drugs.

According to the Indie the British Crime Survey an estimated 168,000 (seven per cent) of the 2.4 million violent offences in 2006-07 involved knives. That compared with five per cent, or 180,000, of the 3.6 million violent incidents in 1996. Knives were used in 62,720 of the 392,000 muggings last year and 44,700 of the 894,000 incidents of “stranger violence”.

However as pointed out in previous posting, this figure does not include under 16s and as the extract from tne BBC webs site below shows, there are many more unreported crimes involving knives.

My son was mugged at knife point in a fairly terrifying ordeal a a few years back and had difficulty in getting the police to record it. Their attitude seemed to be that if he was OK, it wasn’t worth recording it. This was not the first time, as a schoolboy of 11 he was threatened (with another boy) by a gang of young blacks demanded money. They raided their pockets and ran away. That was in Richmond, the more recent case in Chiswick. My son and his friend ran to the boy’s house where his father phoned the police who at first refused to come out on the grounds they were OK and the gang would have fled by now.

It was only on my insistence, and threat to make an official complaint, after I heard the gang had been roaming the area for several weeks, that they even agreed to record it. I am afraid, up till now, the police certainly in London, have been as much part of the problem as the solution.

Read this on the BBC Scotland website from 2005. Note particularly the comment in the middle: “The figures were revised to reflect that most crimes involving knives were not reported.”

BBC Scotland website 18 July 2005

“The level of knife crime in the west of Scotland has been described as “appalling” by police after new figures were released.
They reveal that since January there were 13 murders, 145 attempted murders and 1,100 serious assaults.

Murders involving knives in Strathclyde were three-and-a-half times higher than anywhere else in the UK.

Detective Chief Superintendent John Carnochan, of Strathclyde Police, called it a “knife pandemic”.

The totals, from the Violence Reduction Unit of Strathclyde Police, show that every week for the last six months there has been an average of six attempted murders involving a blade and 43 serious attacks.

The figures were revised to reflect that most crimes involving knives were not reported.

A recent study in hospitals in Glasgow found that about half of those treated for knife wounds did not report the offences to the police.

Organisations such as the World Health Organization have discovered that the west of Scotland does not compare favourably with western Europe.

The level of knife crime, despite crackdowns such as the Spotlight Initiative and Operation Blade, is more similar to places like Latvia or Moscow.

DCS Carnochan, who heads the Violence Reduction Unit, said: “Its stubbornness is something which shocked us when we looked at it.

“We haven’t actually made any appreciable and sustained difference on that propensity for violence that these young men seem to have.”

Experts have compiled a profile of how a knife crime occurs. Typically, it involves two people aged between 15 and 25, probably from a council house and who have not done well at school.

They go out for a drink on a Friday or Saturday night carrying a knife “for protection”.

DCS Carnochan said: “These young men will meet some other young men.

“There’ll be some argument about territory, an insult, a woman, football, it might be anything, and a fight will start.

“That’s when a knife takes on real, fatal, consequences because somebody’s going to end up dead and some young man’s going to end up doing time - life - for murder.”

Mr Carnochan said the young men may have carried knives many times before and nothing happened.

He said: “One night they’re out and they stab somebody and all of a sudden they’re spending life in prison.

“They’ll be 31 or 32 before they come out and I’ll bet when they left the house that their intention was not to murder.

Doctor Jean Moller, from Cape Town, who previously worked in accident and emergency departments in South Africa and Australia, said she was shocked at the number of knife attacks she has dealt with in Glasgow.

She said: “Having moved to Glasgow I have been quite surprised at the high level of violent crime I’ve seen in the emergency departments here.

“It does seem to have a knife culture prevalent throughout the community.”

She added: “I clearly remember my first weekend working in Glasgow and I was horrified at the number of assaults - specifically stabbings and slashings - I had to deal with.”

What Joe Muggs said.

Mike, if you take account of the roots of Glasgow knife culture, the sectarian tensions between immigrant groups then Sue R’s point warrants more consideration. It’s also worth noting that sectarian violence in Glasgow isn’t restricted to whites only. In recent years there have been some very nasty incidents of racist violence perpetrated by and on Asians.

It’s also worth noting that violent crime in other parts of Scotland is low. Personally, I habitually carry a street legal folding pocket knife, and when engaged in outdoor pursuits often carry blades that would be extremely dangerous if used as a weapon. Yet I would never dream of using these tools against a person. Indeed, whenever I’ve found myself in situations where there is a potential for violence my instinct has always been to divest myself of any knives I might posses at the time.

Let me give you a true example. Upon leaving a cinema in an out of town complex in Edinburgh one time I witnessed three teenage pimps setting a gang of underage whores on a single underage girl. I had a Swiss Army Knife in my pocket at the time. Before intervening I went to my nearby car, and put the knife in the glove compartment. I then went back into the cinema and asked the staff to call the police. Then I broke up the fight and faced down the thugs until the police arrived.

The reason I got rid of the knife was that I didn’t want to end up on a charge for possession of an offensive weapon. If there wasn’t a moral panic about knives I could just have kept it in my pocket, and saved the victim some punishment.

Knives are not the problem, attitudes and culture are. Demonising knives as weapons is counter-productive. It encourages the perception of a blade as a weapon rather than a tool, and criminalises innocent behaviour.

A few years a bylaw was brought in in Glasgow prohibiting glasses in bars and mandating plastic tumblers instead. Smashing a glass to produce a weapon, without shredding your hand is a skill that takes practise. Manufacturing a blade from a plastic tumbler is trivial. Introducing a blade to a fist fight is attempted murder and should be treated as such.

In past times Glaswegian thugs attempted to bypass the law where using knife was treated as attempted murder by using razors instead. The answer was simple, ten year sentences for using a razor as a weapon. No new laws were needed, just the appropriate application of existing laws.

So the recorded incident of knife crime has fallen, despite the fact that the police are now more careful about separating out knife crime from other forms of violent crime.

Incidentally, that article is a perfect example of bad use of statistics. It gives plenty of startling figures, but we have no way of knowing whether the trend is up or down in the long or short term, and no comparisons with elsewhere in Britain or Europe. The one comparator it does give is that the incidence of knife crime “does not compare favourably with Western Europe”. Well, that’s very nice, but wouldn’t it be more useful to know how it compares with the suburbs of Paris or Napoli rather than the whole of Western Europe?

Basically, all we have is a couple of people saying “knife crime is bad”, which we knew already.

Prison prison prison prison prison

Tougher sentencing (on its own) won’t achieve anything, because nobody commits a crime expecting to get caught. People who park on double yellow lines don’t think about what the fine is, because they reckon they’ll be back before a warden comes along.

The first step is making it impossible to get away with it. More (And better) CCTV, significantly more police on patrol, more stop-and-search, and break the culture of silence that sees people not passing on information that would lead to arrests.

For those who think that crime is down…..

http://inspectorgadget.wordpress.com/2008/07/03/violent-crime-alert-inspector-who/

“When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, it was always said that only Italians and Maltese crried knifes, Brits fought with fisticuffs.”

Was that said down in the hairdressers?

P.

According to the Indie the British Crime Survey an estimated 168,000 (seven per cent) of the 2.4 million violent offences in 2006-07 involved knives. That compared with five per cent, or 180,000, of the 3.6 million violent incidents in 1996. (British Crimne Survey)

Short order cook - my maths must be at fault, has does a rise from five to seven percent (with under 16s not included) constitute a fall in the recorded incidence of knife crime? What have I missed?

Short order cook says

“The statistics show that knife crime has fallen since 1995″
and
“ the UK has very low murder rates, violent crime rates and crime by juveniles compared to most developed countries”

re 1) a lot of knife crime goes unreported
2) according to some sources the UK is in fact the most violent country in Western Europe (see below)
3) statistics about under 16 crime have only started to be collated for the British Crime Survey this june (2008)

Which statistics are you using?

Knife crime doubles in 2 years
David Leppard Times 19 August 2007

THE full extent of Britain’s violent crime epidemic, which yesterday claimed the life of another teenager, is revealed in shocking new figures that show the number of street robberies involving knives has more than doubled in two years.

Attacks in which a knife was used in a successful mugging have soared, from 25,500 in 2005 to 64,000 in the year to April 2007. The figures mean that each day last year saw, on average, 175 robberies at knife-point in England and Wales – up from 110 the year before and from 69 in 2004-5.

The study, by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (CCJS) at King’s College London, is based on the government’s own statistics. It shows that knives are used in one in five muggings, twice the frequency reported two years ago. The new figures will renew pressure on ministers to address the rising tide of violence and antisocial behaviour on Britain’s streets.

http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/opus439/ccjs_knife_report.pdf

If you read the actual CCJS report you will find that it says precisely the opposite of what David Leppard says it says. In particular look at page 19 which details the statistics for homicides which are the only reliable figures for knife crime.

Short Order Cook is correct, knife crime is falling, or at least it was prior to the current moral panic.

Gregg: Tougher sentencing (on its own) won’t achieve anything, because nobody commits a crime expecting to get caught.

Nonsense. It takes a criminal off the streets.

A large percentage of overall crime is perpetrated by a small percentage of the population, the “criminal element” as it were.

Put those folks in jail and crime goes down. And the longer they’re in jail , the less time they’ll have out on the streets to become repeat offenders, which they probably were already, actually.

nobody commits a crime expecting to get caught.

Not true. The culture of the type of young person who will weild a knife specifically DOES expect that prison time is a normal part of life. A significant section of their friends and elders will be or have been inside, prison provides networking opportunities and even a form of safety, and they are emphatically NOT afraid of it. And here, I think, is the elephant in the room - FEAR. Why are these debates never begun with an admission that we, the middle classes, are AFRAID? And that these kids are not afraid of us, our laws, our law enforcement and our punishments? I know that I - and I suspect you too, dear sensitive Harry’s Place reader - would (and I am not using a metaphor here) defecate with fear if I were put into a prison, but these young kids are way past that. And the desire to punish, punish, punish, punish, punish seems to me to be a fear reaction, a dumb lashing out at the perceived problem - but why are we SO afraid, so disproportionately afraid of something that is not actually that big a threat to our lives and wellbeing? I think it would behoove a lot of people well to address this in themselves before they start - literally - laying down the law. It strikes me as dumb and primitive to react purely out of fear.

Well I have just looked at the CCJS report and find it as notable for what it leaves out as what it includes. For example muggings at knife point which do not include physical injury, are not specifically identified in the BCS survey and the authors are chiefly concerned with knife crime resulting in physical injury which is reported to the police. It excludes knife crime used for threats and knife crime which goes unreported or recorded.

Thus the authors discount the Metropolitan Police’s claim that ‘52 teenagers are victims of knife crime EVERY week in London’ because they cannot be sure that all of these knife crimes involve a stab victim.

So knife muggings without injury are not included as violent crime. Nor are the many knife attacks which do result in injury but go unreported (a figure the Home Office admits it has little idea of). Nor until this year have knife attacks on under 16s been included. The list of exclusions grows longer.

It is also clear that the statistics collected about violent crime involving “sharp weapons” which have led to injury, are patchy and have changed over the last few years which makes it very difficult to get a consistent picture of what is happening nationally.

The authors comment ” it is important to note that it is currently not possible to identify offences involving the use of weapons, other than firearms, from national police recorded crime statistics. It is only from 2007–2008 onwards figures for attempted murder, serious wounding and robbery involving knives and other sharp instruments will be presented in police crime data.”

The reports’ authors comment: “A Home Office report noted in 2003 that ‘[t]here is relatively little evidence as to the extent of knife-carrying, but there are some indications that it is by no means unusual, especially among young men’.

“Similarly, knife use most commonly involves threats, rather than
physical violence. Threats can cause significant distress to the victim, but are generally less serious than a stabbing and are not specifically covered by the BCS.

“It is impossible to be sure that the true figure has changed over time in one direction or another. For example, the true figure might have been 108,000 in 1997 and 198,000 in 2006–2007 or, just as likely, it might have been 216,000 in 1997 and 148,000 in 2006–2007.

“Mugging figures have been ignored in the analysis because of low sample sizes and recent changes in the definition of mugging. ”

So while the overall number of homicides may be little changed in recent years, this is not really any guide to the increase in the general incidence of violent crime involving knives as much of goes unrecorded and unreported.

Surely it is the knife culture we need to tackle, not debate semantically how many homicides were the result of knife attacks.

It seems to me that Brownie bases his politics on overblown media scares, rather than what is happening in reality.

It seems to me that Tagnuzlsx always says the first thing that pops into his head. He clearly didn’t see the programs I’m referring to if he thinks they were “overblown media scares”.

The importance of the homicide statistics is that they are the only provide the only data on knife crime that is not obfuscated by semantics. The definition of homicide is fixed, and each incidence can be measured by the presence of a body. All other measures of knife crime are subject to bias.

That given, the homicide rates can be skewed by the efficacy of medical intervention. For example the extent of the problem of knife attacks in Glasgow compared to elsewhere in the UK is not fully reflected in the homicide figures, because Glasgow is the world centre of excellence when it comes to treating stab injuries. It could be that the general trend downwards in knife homicides over the past decade are effected by a general improvement in that area of medical intervention.

That said, there has certainly been no surge in serious injuries due to knife attacks. If general levels of knife crime were increasing at the rate some would have us believe it should be reflected in the homicide rates. It isn’t and the only plausible explanation foe this is that actual levels of knife crime are either constant or falling.

I am always reminded when this topic is raised, of a Giles cartoon in one of the books stacked up by our loo when I was a child. The cartoon was drawn in the mid 1950s and features a teddy boy in the dock, expressing disbelief that bruised and bandaged policeman in the witness box could have taken exception to his behaviour “just cos I blacked his eye and nicked ‘im with me shiv”.

That rather suggests to me that in the mid 1950s, knife crime was so commonplace as to not just be unremarkable but to be a joking matter.

Mrs Ben, your maths is at fault. Your figures show that knife crime has fallen, and that overall violent crime has fallen. The rise from 5 to 7% I would say is not the important fact in that data.

You are playing fast and loose with the data. You say yourself that the data isn’t good enough to say with certainty whether there is a rise or fall in knife crime, you say that stats have only just started to be collected on knife crime, and on under 16 crime, yet this is somehow used as evidence of a rise in crime. You say that Britain is one of the most violent countries in Western Europe, and then provide as evidence a report which doesn’t even mention any other country than Britain.

The fact is that the only statistics which we have show that violent crime is falling, and that knife crime is falling. You have not provided any explanation why the more recent figures would be biased on the low side compared to the older figures, whereas I have given at least one explanation why the more recent figures may be biased in the opposite direction. As I said at the top of the thread, this “epidemic” of knife crime is just the latest moral panic, and the numbers back this up.

“He clearly didn’t see the programs I’m referring to if he thinks they were “overblown media scares””

Because documentaries are so much more reliable sources than home office statistics.

Short order cook - I haven’t done any maths as there is no maths to be done. The figures on overall knife crime are not available. All we can say is that homicides involving knives have gone down. You seem to be saying this means we can assume other knife crime has not increased either.

I disagree because I seem to know so many people who have been mugged with knives but then I can only speak from personal experience and of course, a few personal anectdotes do not constitute evidence.

In fact we do not know as the incidence of knife crime which does not involve fatal stabbings as it is only patchily recorded if at all. it is not specified in the BCS, and until this year has not been recorded in British police crime statistics