Britain Battles Sharply Rising Knife Crime

LONDON, July 13, 2008— -- If you are a parent in Britain these days, and if you read the papers and watch the news on TV, you may well have revised your mental check list when watching your teenager leave the house each day: school books, lunch money, umbrella, and long deadly knife.

Long deadly knife?

That's right.

The British government is so alarmed over the rise in teen knife crimes that it is planning to introduce a new $200 million anti-crime initiative. In the meantime, part of that initiative was fed like red meat to a British media baying for action against knife crime.

But rather than slam teens into jail for carrying knives, the government plans to require them to visit hospital wards and meet victims of knife attacks, as well as families of knife victims and people who are in prison for committing knife crimes.

It is called "restorative justice," and is designed to show teenage knife carriers the consequences of actually using a knife to harm someone.

Is this really necessary?

Statistics suggest that it is not only necessary but urgent. New police crime figures show the number of convictions for carrying a knife in schools rose six-fold in a decade, with the vast majority of offenders never going to jail, according to The Observer newspaper.

When I first move to London in 1977, I was coming from two straight years of combat coverage of the Lebanese civil war. Britain was, to say the least, considered one of the safest places on earth.

Gun crime was low, and only a hand full of police carried firearms (these days the majority of British police are still unarmed, but the number of armed police has increased).

While Britain has lower rates of gun and knife crime than the United States, more than 20,000 serious knife crimes were committed last year, according to government statistics quoted in the The Sunday Telegraph. The statistics indicate that almost 60 people are stabbed or mugged at knife-point every day.

This past week alone, six people died in knife attacks in a 24-hour period. And in another striking phenomenon, teenagers are increasingly likely to be knife-crime victims than any other age group.