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.

Knife Crimes New to Britain

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.

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 Sunday Telegraph. The statistics indicate that almost 60 people are stabbed or mugged at knife-point every day.

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

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

Young People Carrying Knives

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

And that's 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 reassure the public that something is being done about knife crime.

"I'm very keen we make people 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 offenses.

Knife crime has become such an issue in the U.K. that Nike decided to withdraw its "Air Stab" sneakers from store shelves, citing an "unfortunate coincidence" with the spate of knife attacks sweeping the country.

A spokesman for the company told reporters that the "stab" in the product's name was short for "stability," adding, "we completely reject the idea that we are in any way condoning or encouraging the issue of knife usage."

In early July, two security guards at the Nike flagship store in London were themselves attacked by a gang of teenage shoplifters. They were stabbed in their legs and backs.

When news of the Facebook application made headlines, the uncle of Rob Knox, the Harry Potter actor who died after being stabbed in May, told the British newspaper The Sun that the application "incited" violence.

Facebook has released a statement to the press stating the application has been removed and was produced by a third party. Slide was not available for comment.