How We Can Fight the Knife Crime Menace
Evening Standard
The recent stabbing to death of Kiyan Prince outside his north London school was a heart-stopping moment for any London parent. You can warn your children against "bad company", chauffeur them to and from every engagement and take particular care after dark. But school is supposed to be a place of safety. The fatal stabbing of Kiyan Prince has shocked London. But one politician familiar with the problem says metal detectors are not the answer -- we need a concerted change in youth culture
So, when a schoolboy is stabbed to death in broad daylight in front of witnesses outside his school, every parent feels helpless. Knife crime is a schoolboy¹s crime. The peak age is between 14 and 21. Two people who know how the parents of Kiyan Prince feel today are the parents of Robert Levy, a schoolboy in my Hackney constituency. Aged only 16, he was stabbed to death in the centre of Hackney by an even younger boy - just 15 - back in 2004. Like Kiyan, Robert was a hard-working student who was trying to act as a peacemaker and, like Kiyan¹s parents, his were respectable, white-collar professionals. The stabbing had a galvanising effect in Hackney. It is easy to dismiss gun crime as "bad on bad crime" However, the stabbing of a perfectly innocent schoolboy seemed to touch something in the community's psyche. Some time afterwards, I met Robert Levy's father. He still seemed stunned. The sense of shock permeated the entire community.
The funeral was huge. And afterwards both community and police went to work on the issue of knives, guns and gang-related crime with renewed energy and unprecedented levels of co-operation. The police strategy in Hackney has included going into schools warning children of the dangers of knives but, even more importantly, showing young people through a variety of schemes and projects that there is a different value system from that of the streets and MTV. Crucially, the police have also concentrated on targeting what they describe as the "criminal role models". These are older established criminals and drug dealers who "mentor" boys in their early teens in the way of the street and the culture of violence.But knife crime continues to climb London-wide. Knife seizures are on the increase and there is a rise in stab wounds.
Too often, playground disputes that used to end with a bloody nose now end with someone bleeding to death in the gutter. Knives are more accessible than guns to the average young teenager. I have sat and talked to boys brought to see me by worried mothers when they have been suspended from school for carrying knives. Faced by me and their mothers they sit and squirm, but they still insist they needed their knife for "protection". Concerned and responsible parents struggling against street culture and peer-group pressure are in the majority. Sadly, the police tell me that there are some parents who, astonishingly, equip their children with knives to take to school in order to "protect" themselves. But, far from protecting the user, a knife puts a schoolboy at risk of committing unintended homicide.
The Government is well aware of the rise in knife crime and is changing the law in order to put up the age when you can legally carry a knife from 16 to 18. Teachers are to be given more powers to search schoolchildren for weapons. There is also going to be a nation-wide knife amnesty. There is even talk of introducing metal detectors in schools. I have always been opposed to this. For one thing these stabbings tend to take place outside school. And, unless every single school in a borough had one, individual schools would be unlikely to volunteer for one. In these days of league tables and parental choice, having a metal detector in your school would be the equivalent of a flashing neon sign on the roof saying: "Warning: Violent and Unruly School".
Respectable parents would stay away in droves and these schools would plummet even further downhill. But maybe it is something we should all look at again. There is concern about levels of knife crime in black immigrant communities. The truth is that schoolboys of all colours carry knives. And the knife-crime capital of the British Isles is actually Glasgow. Kiyan Prince was stabbed to death not in the inner city but in the respectable London borough of Barnet. Policemen who have struggled with this problem in Hackney believe that the outer London boroughs cannot afford to ignore the problems of knife, gun and gang-related crime. They believe the rest of London can learn from their work and need to make these issues a priority in the same way that they have. And the police are clear that there is only so much law enforcement can do. The underlying issue is inner city youth culture. Good parents need positive reinforcement and bad parents need help. Persistent offenders need to be targeted and put behind bars. And younger children who have made these men (and their life-styles) their role models need to be shown another way. Young children grow up in a society where the music, the video games and the films are all saturated with violence. They need to be taught that they do not need to succumb to that environment. The music industry must examine its role in today¹s endemic culture of violence.
In 2012 the Olympics come to London. Some of the areas of the inner city with the worst knife, gun and gang-related crime problems adjoin the Olympic park. There is still time for government, police and other agencies to put the resources in and get to grips with the problem. If they do not, not only will other mothers weep like the mother of Kiyan Prince weeps tonight, but London as a whole could be severely embarrassed.
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