Facebook, Nike Deny Promoting Knife Crime

LONDON, July 29, 2008 — -- Facebook has hundreds of applications. Some are handy for daily tasks -- organizing social events, sharing photos. Others have wackier uses, like throwing a virtual sheep at your friends. But getting stabbed by your friend has proved to be a step too far.

Members of Facebook could send a message to anyone else on the site informing them they had been "shanked" -- street slang for stabbed. If they accepted the request, their profile would show they had been stabbed and by whom, illustrated by a knife icon.

Facebook didn't actually develop the stabbing application. Like hundreds of applications available on the social networking site, it was created by an outside company -- in this case, Slide, an American software company.

Slide added the option to stab your friends to their popular SuperPoke! application, which allows users to perform all kinds of virtual actions like hugs, kisses and dances.

But the knife feature has now been removed, following angry complaints from anti-knife-crime campaigners.

The British government is so alarmed over the rise in real-life teen knife crimes that it has introduced a new $200 million anticrime initiative.

But rather than slam teens into jail for carrying knives, the government requires them to visit hospital wards and meet victims of knife attacks, as well as victims' families 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.

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.

Three decades ago, Britain was considered one of the safest places on earth.

Gun crime was low, and only a handful of police carried firearms. These days the majority of British police are still unarmed, but the number of armed police has increased.