There has been a total of 18 fatal stabbings involving teenagers in London this year. Knife crime has risen by 16% in the past two years. Incidents involving a knife or sharp instrument increased in the year ending June 2017 by 13%. Knife crime is on the rise.
However, the concerning question is, why are more young people carrying knives? Adults are ignorant to the fact that the number of teenagers carrying weapons are increasing. They are also ignorant to why this is happening. Young people have stated that there are situations where your fists aren’t going to help you. That’s why people carry knives. People are scared.
Young people risk carrying knives because they seek protection. What does that say about our society? Young people do not feel safe anymore.
Police have stated that most of those caught carrying blades have no links to gangs. 75% have no connection with gangs at all. This is a huge percentage of young people that carry weapons out of fear rather than with intention to cause offence. Another factor to knife crime is that in London 95% of those caught with a knife are male. This makes you think that this problem is overwhelmingly a young male issue; Young boys seeking power or protection. It is often hard for young males in London to live up to this ‘tough’ stereotype that they think they should be. Many young people, because of where they live, believe they should act a certain way to fit in and be accepted. This does not help the issue of rising crime.
Politicians say that they are determined to find solutions to the rising level of knife crime in Britain. The Youth violence commission for example is trying to find solutions to this ongoing issue. From Aug-2015 to Aug-2016 knife crime in people aged under 24 in Croydon was as high as over 80 people.
Most people believe that the amount of knife crime among young people will increase further if nothing is done. To try and lower this unbelievably steady rise of knife crime, many believe that ‘Tougher sentences’ should be inflicted on any young person caught carrying a knife.
Young peoples’ justification of carrying knives is that they would rather take the chance of punishment than get hurt by the weapon itself. This makes knife crime incredibly hard to tackle as young people will not stop carrying knives if they do not feel safe- even if the punishment is more severe. I believe that to help prevent this rise of crime we need to look deeper into the understanding of why a person is committing a crime and find the route of this issue that has grown drastically over the past few years.
