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.

That, ironically, may be the reason why teenage knife possession is on the rise. In story after story on this subject, and in my own street interviews in recent months with teens on the street, youngster say they don't intend to hurt anyone, but only to defend themselves if attacked.

Of course the problem with that logic is that young people can be easily excitable or threatened, and minor arguments sometimes have a way of escalating. Put a knife or two into the mix and there can be death, injury, retribution, and more crime.

And that is before you start talking about youth gangs, which systematically seek out victims.

No one really knows precisely how many young people carry knives, only that the number is increasing. But in fairness to Britain's global image, no one is suggesting that anything but a small minority are involved.

Still, with knife murders and injuries in the news on average every week, it has enough voters worried that Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labour government, already reeling in the polls over economic policy, data security blunders, and his reportedly dithering personality, is urgently trying to re-assure the public that something is being done about knife crime.

"I'm very keen we make people to face up to the consequences of their actions," Government Home Secretary Jacqui Smith told Britain's Sky Television. "It's a practical and tough approach to make young people understand the implications of carrying a knife."

The home secretary has rejected calls for youth knife carriers to be thrown in jail, where she says they will only learn how to become more dangerous.

But youths who are convicted of actually carrying out knife attacks are already subject to serving time. That policy will not change. What will change, the government hopes, is that there will be fewer offences.

The debate still rages about root causes of youth violence: Is it all due to weak schools, weak parenting, too few police, too much violence in the media, etc.?

But for many youngsters, a knife remains, they believe, a source of security. Until that is replaced with real security, we could be looking at a very worrying corner of British life.