Halving Knife Crime

Kaitlin Dryburgh“Halving knife crime within a decade”. A noble yet tricky task. As Yvette Cooper stood up to give her speech at Labour’s party conference she delivered one of only a small amount of measurables goals, to halve knife crime. Of course, the specifics of how she is going to achieve this are not so clear. They’ve previously stated and are so far still committed to creating a network of youth hubs while also increasing the amount of youth workers in A&Es, and pupil referral units. Yet it’s still a big ask. Knife crime is on the rise among young people. A day after the party conference began shocking but all too familiar news hit the headlines, a 15-year-old boy was stabbed near where he lived in London. A residential street looking like any other with a white police tent sprung in the middle, this is a pattern that we’re starting to become numb to. There are too many heartbreaking stories to mention but in the case of this young person who was killed the witnesses that ran out of their houses offering help say he lay there begging 'I'm 15, I'm 15, don't let me die'. What is going on when a 15-year-old dying in the street genuinely isn’t a big story. Young people are the age-group most likely to be victims of knife-crime, and it’s only increasing. It still feels relatively ignored in comparison to the scale of the problem, the increase is UK wide. It’s not just a problem adults are speaking about; this is a worry for children and young people too. In survey of young people aged 12-18 almost half of them identified that they were worried about knife crime in their area, and 31% were worried about knives in their school. It’s something that young people are legitimately troubled by.Scotland had previously done some amazing work to transform the growing knife crime in Glasgow, and elsewhere in Scotland. The Scottish Violence Reduction Unit (SVRU) was truly an excellent policy and its blueprint of treating violence as a health problem has been copied many times over. But even Scotland has seen an indication that knife crime is back on the rise, and the SVRU has warned that budget cuts on the service will have a negative impact. There has been measures put in place to try and combat the problem, or at least look as if it is. The ban on zombie knifes has come into effect recently. These knifes that really have no other role but to cause harm to other humans have been involved in many murders over the past several years, becoming somewhat of a symbol now. Furthermore, the current Government will look to ban ninja swords in the name of victim Ronan Kanda who was slain outside his home in a case of mistaken identity. Good move, when neither of these hold any purpose but to harm. Yet, if this is one of their significant combatants to knife crime it won’t work. After all with a lot of these issues, when the cat is out the bag there’s no going back. These knifes are more deadly, so they are more likely to cause fatalities but in reality a knife will be replaced with another knife. It was illegal to carry a knife before and that never stopped them, this is just a tad bit more illegal. It’s a PR legislation. So how has the UK got this point. There are many influencing factors, social media has played a part, but a recent study found that it’s impacts are not universal. Yet the glorification of knife imagery online has spurred on many to carry knifes, and social media conglomerates have as of course done little to stop this. Social media’s biggest selling point is its ability to provide instant communication this in itself means tensions can escalate rapidly, plans can be made with no time to cool off and actually evaluate what you intend to do. And this situation has been demonstrated on so many occasions. But what one reason keeps coming up time and time again, austerity. Austerity from the coalition government coupled with continuing cuts over the years has decimated essential services such as social work and left the vital network of youth clubs, after school services and just general spaces for young people to exist non-existent. Now, although the Labour Government are not clear on the actual details of their Youth Hubs their purpose is to intervene early and stop knife crime and violence from taking place. Perhaps this shows a change from the previous government which had for too long neglected young people in society. Common Weal’s policy have often been pro-hub. In an ideal world Scotland’s National Care Service would emphasis the needs for locality and have a care-hub in your local area. But that being said in order for hubs to work in any capacity there needs to be structures in place. First of all, it needs to be properly funded. Throwing cash at it for one year and not providing hubs with the funds to make a difference and plan for the future won’t work. Secondly, there needs to be a step away from nationalisation. Hubs work best when local authorities are in charge of them. Thinking to knife crime a large city with gang issues is a different kettle of fish to a small town effected by country lines. Local democracy will be key.Lastly the institutions that will also make an impact, the services that any youth hub will presumably have to interact with will also have to have the resources to enact change. What’s the point if a youth hub identifies a person in trouble, maybe poor mental health is an issue but when they go to the local NHS services it’s a 6 month wait for an appointment. Similarly social workers are over-worker and over capacity as it is, where is the commitment to strengthen these services? A youth hub is not only a space to make young people more connected to their community and provide a safe space to be young adults, but it’s also a vehicle to get young people the help they need. If the help isn’t there or doesn’t work what’s the point? The sad thing is from the looks of things we’re about to enter into some re-branded austerity. It doesn’t look (although I could be completely wrong) that any of those services will be getting a boost, so where does this really leave youth hubs and their effect on knife crime? As ever they have been sparse on details, but so far local democracy doesn’t seem to be at the top of Starmer’s list. Youth hubs are not a bad idea at all, but if they’re designed poorly it won’t have the desired effects. Similarly, if they have to go up against austerity they’ll fail before they’ve even begun.