Sadly street crime and violence has permeated the very fabric of our lives. In our inner cities, suburban areas and now even small country villages, no one seems to be immune, writes Steve Collins of the personal safety awareness trainers PS5.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has published data on police recorded crime involving a knife or sharp instrument for a selection of serious violent offences. In the year ending March 2021, there were over 41,000 offences involving a knife or sharp instrument in England and Wales; and remember these figures only represent the ones we know about, so who knows what the real figures actually are.
Knife crime includes: carrying a knife; trying to buy a knife if you are under 18; threatening someone with a knife; owning a banned knife; injuring or fatally wounding somebody with a knife; intent to injure or harm somebody with a knife; a robbery or burglary where a knife was carried as a weapon.
Possession of a knife (or any weapon) carries a prison sentence of up to five years, even if it’s not used. Carrying any kind of offensive edged or sharp instrument can put you behind bars. This can include things like a sharpened comb, or something with a blade that’s disguised as something else, like a lighter or a pen for example.
Edged weapons are, without question, amongst the easiest of all weapons to conceal, and criminals have always known that the thought of being slashed or stabbed creates more physical and psychological terror than being shot. This is why the blade has often been the preferred weapon of the armed robber and, as recent events have shown, even the smallest and most innocuous knives, such as craft knives, have caused mass destruction on a horrific scale.
Contrary to popular belief, a knife does not have to be over three inches long to be lethal. It doesn’t even have to have a point and it definitely needn’t be made of steel. I have studied examples of disguised knives with blades no more than half-inch long, which will kill just as efficiently as any eight-inch stiletto. Home-made and improvised edged weapons can be amongst the most dangerous. Why? Because they don’t look like a weapon! For example, superglue a razor blade onto the back of a credit card with just a fraction of an inch protruding over the edge. It will nestle in your wallet quite innocently with the rest of your credit cards and yet is capable of slitting someone’s throat from ear to ear! The chances are you could still walk onto any aircraft in the world with this type of weapon, unchallenged, although security will probably have relieved you of your nail clippers – a sobering thought.
They are getting younger
Knife crime diminishes our quality of life, and ranges from an inability to walk safely alone in the park or on the streets of our own towns, to the forced installation of expensive security systems and, because of an abject lack of a police presence, the necessity to formulate neighbourhood watch groups – even in our quietest country villages.
Reports of children committing suicide as a result of experiencing violence and bullying in schools are rife. Children carrying weapons and committing horrific crimes of violence, murder and rape are on the increase. Many youths simply believe that they have to carry a weapon at school and on the streets in order to protect themselves. All these things are growing to epidemic proportions so much so that there is now a worldwide problem with aggressive and violent behaviour from children and adolescents, not only on the streets of our cities, but in our small towns and rural villages. Bizarre as it may sound, some communities are literally living in fear of the local children.
Knife crime is on the rise across the UK, and police say most of the children caught carrying blades are not in gangs or even associated with gangs. So why are more young people between the ages of five and 15 carrying knives and using them?
Kids carry knives because they are scared of kids that carry knives, and believe that carrying a blade is the only way they can protect themselves from each other. They believe that in a knife attack their fists are not going to be of any use and the only way to protect themselves from a knife is with a knife.
There has been a 10pc increase in knife crime in England and Wales over the previous 12 months to March 2022. Of course the Government will just bang on about policing and tougher punishments, when in fact the real problem is an abject lack of education. A child of five or six years who shows aggressive and violent behaviour is more likely than others to exhibit delinquent, criminal and violent behaviour in adolescence and adulthood. Simple fact; in the majority of cases violent children grow up into violent adults. However, no child is born violent. There’s no such thing as a three-year-old mass murderer or serial killer. Yes, very young children have killed and do kill, but many more children are killed by adults than there are adults killed by children. For a child to develop into a violent adolescent and consequently a violent adult, the child first has to be exposed to violence and that first exposure will invariably have been at the hands of an older person.
Fact: violent crime is on the increase.
Fact: those who commit violent crimes are getting younger.
Fact: they weren’t born like that.
Our children are the future, and no kid is born wanting to carry a knife. It is essential we invest in them now; we need to get kids off the streets and fight knife crime.
Remember, if you carry a knife you are a potential murderer.
