Why knife crime?
Influx of recent knife Crime
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From march 2017 -2018 there have been 40,147 offences, a 16% increase since the previous year and the highest number since 2011. Out of 44 police forces, 38 recorded knife crime since 2011.
NHS hospitals throughout England has showed a 14% increase in admission for assault by sharp objects
In just a year 20,113 people were cautioned, reprimanded or convicted for carrying a knife in England and Wales, most of whom were adults. But one in five, 4,291, was under the age of 18, the highest number for eight years. The youth is becoming extremely vulnerable to be exploited in gangs and introduced to a life of crime. According to the Independent young black and minority ethnic boys and men were disproportionately affected, as both victims and perpetrators. Police have reported an increase since 2014 from 3,900 knife crimes a year against under 25s to 6,500 annually.
"Adopting a public health model to treat knife violence"
Why is it still prevalent?
What is important to us is that we find the root(s) of the problem and to clearly understand why it is happening. To be able to tackle this problem as a community we all need to understand why this is happening and educate others on Knife crime. As an organisation we emphasise the importance on educating the community and the youth to enable them to make better decisions.
Lack of safe public facilities and services
There are poorly designed/ maintained parks that have led to criminal activities. Junior Smart, of youth charity the St Giles Trust said. “They’re on the street corners, they’re in the takeaways, they’re congregating and that’s where you get trouble. The YMCA said council spending on youth services has fallen by more than £750m since 2010-11 across England and Wales.
“If there’s no local youth club providing a safe place to meet, where do they go?”
Drug Dealing and gangs
More often than not, individuals who are involved in knife crime are also involved with gangs. Throughout London there have been persistent postcode wars between rival gangs. Gangs are known to select people as young as twelve and groom them into becoming a gang member. There is a hierarchy and these ‘foot soldiers’ become exploited. It means little to gang leaders (also known as elders) if one were to be heavily injured or even killed. Due to influence of gangs, youth are normalised to violence, hostility and death. A lot of them are suffering from trauma and have no outlet. Youth also tend to join gangs to deal drugs as means to get money to support their families at home. Statistics show that the proportion of murders in England and Wales involving known drug dealers and users rose from 50 per cent to 57 per cent between 2014-15 and 2016-17.
Budget cuts in education, child services, services that help families, and the police.
Budget cuts make it much harder for services to be continually provided and at a high standard. The London mayor said that in 2010, cutting government spending meant the capital had 4.1 officers per 1,000 Londoners – but by 2016/17 that had dropped to 3.3 officers per 1,000 Londoners. Police spending was £423 per person in 2012/13, down to £337 in 2016/17. The mayor’s figures suggest a 20% fall. These budget cuts happened as London’s population grew, now almost reaching 9 million today. As London is growing, important services are stretched more thinly to try and accommodate everyone.
Toxic Masculinity
At a young age, we are heavily influenced by what surrounds us. Unfortunately, what surrounds the individuals involved in knife crime is a very warped and highly violent idea of what it is to be masculine. To the youth, these elders of knife crime become their ideal of masculine identity. This then promotes using big guns, big knives, and using violence as a way to highlight how ‘masculine’ they are. This is then highlighted with social media such as snap chat, Facebook and twitter. However unlikely it may seem, gangs use social media to film stabbings and attacks on other gang members to instigate gang wars. There is clear want to become the ‘alpha’ or the strongest and toughest member of the gang community. A lot of this is due to lack of education and especially lack of education in creative subjects. Creativity makes people problem solve in a very different way and often involves self-reflection. It also involves a lot of collaboration and allows individuals to open up more to empathy. Creativity can involve, arts, design, music etc, and allows people to generally get more in touch with their emotions- something is rarely done in environments of toxic masculinity.
Masculinity in the 21st century has evolved from its traditional qualities, men should not feel they have to be a certain way to qualify as being ‘masculine’.