Serious violence
Rather than address the many problems that marginalised young people are forced to deal with the focus and blame is put on the children struggling.
Responses which involve intrusive and discriminatory measures are enacted both in the name of being ‘tough on crime’ but also as part of safeguarding, and yet they cause harm to children.
Such responses ignore the ever deepening inequality and deprivation which creates a tinderbox for violence. Not only have cuts been made across all provision, austerity measures Labour PM Kier Starmer has announced his government intends to continue, but youth services and education have been especially hard hit.
What funding there is available now is often for ‘targeted’ support rather than universal services. As well as leaving many children without provision they are entitled to it often involves intrusive data sharing, loss of privacy and can be stigmatising.
Instead we need rights-centred provision for children. Spaces, influences and support to help all children grow and thrive, not just survive.
“Violence has become justification for deeply intrusive measures, which do not respect children’s human rights, while the state isn’t providing the basic support and services we know are needed to keep children safe.”
The Victoria Climbié Foundation UK
Warped framing of ‘sharp instruments’
The focus on particular categories of weapon – so-called ‘knife enabled’ crime actually includes use of any sharp thing including broken glass or screwdrivers – shapes the response around search for that item and moves our gaze away from what these weapons are used for.
‘Knife crime’ figures include being in possession of a knife or weapon but also include use of them for crimes including rape, sexual assault, homicide, attempted murder; wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm (GBH); wounding or inflicting grievous bodily harm (i.e. without intent); threats to kill; robbery of business property and robbery of personal property.
These crimes are likely to have different drivers and require different responses.
“…commentaries often fail to disaggregate the distinct trends and the problem, once again, is laid at the feet of young people, gangs and, overwhelmingly…black and minority ethnic
communities”
Dr Elaine Williams and Professor Peter Squires
Rethinking Knife Crime: Policing, Violence and Moral Panic (2021)
Hides violence against women
Focus on knives and on youth hides the reality that a significant number of adult women are the victims, and that these women are killed within the home. If the focus were on women being killed by current or ex partners, within the home, this would lead us to a different response.
“One participant pointed out that despite adult domestic violence contributing the biggest statistical representation of knife homicides and killing on average two women a week this context does not receive anywhere near the heightened media reporting that violence between young people does.”
Dr Elaine Williams, Ebinehita Iyere, Ben Lindsay, Claude Murray and Dr Zeyana Ramadhan
Power the Fight: Therapeutic Intervention for Peace (TIP) Report Culturally Competent Responses to Serious Youth Violence in London (2020)
“Evidence documents that the knife has, historically speaking, been the weapon of choice in perpetrating fatal violence against women. Yet this feature of lethal violence has rarely incited the fears and anxieties which have been triggered by the debate on ‘knife crime’ as currently presented to us by the media and political parties.”
Dr Elizabeth Cook and Professor Sandra Walklate
Current Sociology: Gendered objects and gendered spaces: The invisibilities of ‘knife’ crime (2022)
“….efforts to regulate offensive weapons through legislation hit a wall when it comes to domestic abuse committed within the home. There have been several proposals over the years to either blunt kitchen knives or confiscate particular knives in the possession of known domestic abuse perpetrators – the assumption here being that the removal of the weapon is the removal of risk. However, the fundamental issue in domestic abuse is that anything is a weapon.”
Dr Elizabeth Cook
Vision: A gender analysis of ‘knife crime’ (2023)
Knives are mostly used by and against adults, not children
It is tragic that children are impacted by violent crime. In 2008 28 teenagers were stabbed or shot in London. 2012 saw the lowest number in a decade with 12 killed. In 2019 that number had again risen to 25, with 23 of these being stabbing victims. Moreover when 16-year-old Londoners were asked the fear around violence, gangs and knives featured high in their responses. There is deep impact and harm done to families, friends and communities.
However, the framing of ‘youth’ crime misrepresents the facts, and misdirects our response. 83% of the 3,775 “hospital episodes” recorded in English hospitals in 2022/23 due to assault by a sharp object were over 18. There were 19,000 cautions in 2022-23 for possession of a knife or other sharp instrument weapon. 82% of these were for over 18s.
“there is no statistical justification for the framing of ‘knife crime’ as a youth phenomenon and yet the construction of knife crime youths has been largely unchallenged and increasingly racialised in public discourse”.
Dr Elaine Williams
Crime, Law and Social Change: Policing the Crisis in the 21st Century; the making of “knife crime youths” in Britain (2023)
82% of those in possession of knives or sharp objects are over 18
Racist narratives have justified oppressive targeting
“…once economic factors are accounted for, there is no correlation between ethnicity and knife offending”
Dr Elaine Williams
Crime, Law and Social Change: Policing the Crisis in the 21st Century; the making of “knife crime youths” in Britain (2023)
“When we took everything else into account, ethnicity dropped out of the model altogether”
Professor Marian Fitzgerald quoted
Gary Younge
The Guardian: Beyond the Blade (2017)
This shouldn’t need saying but using ‘sharp instruments’ as a weapon of course isn’t specifically a Black (or Asian) crime despite media and political framing. The long running painting of knife and gun crime as somehow a ‘cultural’ phenomenon is so clearly deeply racist and has underpinned so much of the justification for the painting of the problem as ‘problematic’ individuals rather than the conditions in which they are made to live.
“We won’t stop this”, said Tony Blair in 2007, “by pretending that it isn’t young Black kids doing it.” The measures launched on the back of this, targeting Black children, have not resulted in a reduction in violence.
That Black children are killed should serve as an urgent call that these children are disproportionately neglected by the state, not as justification to further oppress them.
“The strategy of extending police powers and targeting young Black people has been operational since 2008, and yet the recent figures of knife offences suggest this previous approach has been ineffective.”
Dr Elaine Williams
The problem with knife crime: what’s in a label? (2022)
“The strategy of extending police powers and targeting young Black people has been operational since 2008, and yet the recent figures of knife offences suggest this previous approach has been ineffective.”
Dr Elaine Williams
The problem with knife crime: what’s in a label? (2022)
‘Tough on crime’ is tough on kids
For decades government after government have responded with ‘tough’ measures. Surveillance and targeting of children ‘likely’ to be at risk; prevention orders which significantly impact individuals freedom without any need of evidence or a conviction; a ramping up of the ‘war on drugs’ and ‘zero tolerance’ policies towards anyone carrying any sharp object meaning s60 suspicion-less stop and search; and an increase in police carrying of Tasers.
None of this has reduced levels of violence, injury or death – at their highest since a decade ago – but it has resulted in harm for the children and communities policed in this way. There new Labour government has ignored all such evidence and intend to continue the same approach.
“You put that child on the Matrix, you wrote that child’s future. There are no second chances in this society for poor black kids.”
Martin Griffiths (Trauma Surgeon at Royal London Hospital and advocate for violence reduction) quoted
Amnesty International: Trapped in the Matrix (2018)
Knife Crime Prevention Orders
The Knife Crime Prevention Orders (KCPOs) involve significant restrictions without being found guilty of a crime. Children can have curfew imposed, be banned from going to certain places, seeing people, and may be mandated to undertake counselling and educational activities whether or not they want to. Breaking these conditions can result in prison for up to two years. A Conservative initiative, building on the New Labour model, the measures were explained as necessary so the “state could wrap its arms around children”
The “‘arm-wrapping’ metaphor itself begs some additional attention. Coming as it does from a Government largely responsible for austerity measures and cuts that impact directly upon the very category of children and young people likely to be made subject to KCPOs, such an emphasis on ‘wraparound care’ and services seems palpably insincere.”
Professor Jen Hendry
The British Journal of Criminology: ‘The Usual Suspects’: Knife Crime Prevention Orders and the ‘Difficult’ Regulatory Subject (2021)
“…under-scrutinized legislation was passed that not only perpetuated the problematic idea that either being a particular sort of person or having a particular status in itself can ground criminal responsibility, but which also targeted this instrumentally at the country’s disadvantaged children.”
Professor Jen Hendry
The British Journal of Criminology: ‘The Usual Suspects’: Knife Crime Prevention Orders and the ‘Difficult’ Regulatory Subject (2021)
“The requirements attached to an Order are not expressly limited and could be particularly invasive and interfere with the right to private and family life, the right to freedom of religion, the right to freedom of expression, the right to freedom of association, and the right to peaceful enjoyment of property “
Baroness Williams of Trafford, Joint Committee on Human Rights
Letter to Government re Offensive Weapons Bill (2019)
Safeguarding?
The justification of ‘safeguarding’ extends the remit and reach of the police but not in ways which necessarily protect the children targeted. Sometimes measures did protect from specific risks but at significant cost to the child and infringements of their rights to privacy. Far reaching decisions are made about children based on information such as their taste in music, their social media activity, their academic performance and attendance at school. Being included on databases, and their information shared across agencies, resulted in harm to children arising from negative treatment by different organisations.
“we repeatedly found that – often for lack of resources and funding, both at least partially the result of austerity politics and cuts – a young person who had been found to have been ‘exploited’ and ‘trafficked’ did not have any meaningful social or material support extended to them. What is more, even where support was extended, it was often only piecemeal, short sighted or, worse, even worked to split up families and social networks.”
Professor Insa Koch, Dr Patrick Williams and Dr Lauren Wroe
Race and Class: ‘County lines’: racism, safeguarding and statecraft in Britain (2023)
“…multi-agency meetings in relation to ‘gang’ policies have allowed for police intelligence to be shared widely across partners, resulting in tight forms of surveillance of young people and their family members and friends.”
Professor Insa Koch, Dr Patrick Williams and Dr Lauren Wroe
Race and Class: ‘County lines’: racism, safeguarding and statecraft in Britain (2023)
“One function of peer-mapping in this way is that it allows for the inclusion and monitoring of a broad population of young people and their associates on the basis of ‘suspicion’. “
“… information sharing sounds good. But in practice it is not good. It’s the perception of those young people – there is so much about how police manage risk in relation to gang offending – it’s not scrutinised, it’s vague – it’s just not in young people’s best interests. They are always looking at young people through the lens of ‘they are risky’, not that ‘they are at risk’. There is a propensity to share information that restricts young people’s options, not expands them…Landlords don’t want to take them on as tenants.”
Former housing relocation officer quoted
Amnesty International: Trapped in the Matrix (2018)
“…interventions focused on individual or groups of young people and included: dispersal, the use of exclusion zones to prevent young people returning to an area, blocks on social media to disrupt contact with ‘risky’ friends, panic buttons and CCTV installed at home and curfews or bans from associating with certain friends. Whilst these interventions might increase the physical safety of young people, they leave the contexts of harm unaddressed and pose significant risks to civil liberties.”
“…interventions focused on individual or groups of young people and included: dispersal, the use of exclusion zones to prevent young people returning to an area, blocks on social media to disrupt contact with ‘risky’ friends, panic buttons and CCTV installed at home and curfews or bans from associating with certain friends. Whilst these interventions might increase the physical safety of young people, they leave the contexts of harm unaddressed and pose significant risks to civil liberties.”
Root causes and real solutions
There must be an end to measures which increase oppression and harm for children already deeply disadvantaged by the failing of the state to act in accordance with the social and economic human rights agreed to.
Significant change is needed. Measures which address the deep inequality which leaves many children in poverty and desperation. Children need support not surveillance which must include decent housing, the right to food, to health.
“…youth violence should be framed in the broader context of structural violence against disenfranchised youth. Any solution to serious youth violence therefore needs to be embedded in a human rights and social justice framework.”
“The role of local authority social care teams in addressing, not just individual harm, but social policy and provision that drives multiple instances of harm could begin to address these challenges.”
“…what we really need to see is politicians wiilling to talk less about drill music, social media and ‘gangs’, and more about the marginalising impacts of austerity, cuts to youth services, permanent school exclusion, and discriminatory stop and search.”
“…there are some societal systems and structures which continue to perpetuate the trauma in terms of rejection and identity…I think a lot of that happens in our most significant institutions like school, like jobs, like the benefits system and various other social structures”
Youth Development Worker quoted in research
Dr Elaine Williams, Ebinehita Iyere, Ben Lindsay, Claude Murray and Dr Zeyana Ramadhan
Power the Fight: Therapeutic Intervention for Peace (TIP) Report Culturally Competent Responses to Serious Youth Violence in London (2020)
Safe supportive spaces and youth workers essential
Evidence from organisations including UNISON and the YMCA documents the severe cuts experienced – 73% cut in youth services since 2011 – and the impact on children and their communities.
Children – and especially those for whom school is a difficult place to be – need youth clubs, safe spaces to hang out with other children and with supportive adults.
As well as increases in funding these adults and youth workers need to be able to respect the privacy of the children, not to be required to share information about them with huge numbers of other services.
“It was where it all began for me, it was like a second home. It was somewhere to go after school instead of just hanging round on the roads, causing trouble or whatever. We had dance, the gym for the boys, cooking classes, we used to go on trips. It was like a big family.”
“Key to the future is a commitment to rebuild the UK’s crumbing and devastated youth-service infrastructure. The cuts since 2010 have left vast areas without any council-run facilities. There’s a real danger this will create a lost generation of young people isolated from society, vulnerable to exploitation and, through no fault of their own, unable to contribute to the wellbeing and future of their communities.”
“’…cuts to services and closures of youth centres – along with the loss of detached youth workers and mentors and the increased economic stresses on households, lack of housing security and overcrowding – were seen as severely exacerbating the rates and intensity of violence between young people. More broadly, the diminishing opportunities and lack of investment in young people that the ideology of austerity has communicated were seen to have left a lasting pessimism and feelings of social abandonment.”
Youth Development Worker quoted in research
Dr Elaine Williams, Ebinehita Iyere, Ben Lindsay, Claude Murray and Dr Zeyana Ramadhan
Power the Fight: Therapeutic Intervention for Peace (TIP) Report Culturally Competent Responses to Serious Youth Violence in London (2020)
“Under the Education Act 1996, councils have a legal duty to “secure, so far as is reasonably practicable, sufficient provision of educational and recreational leisure-time activities for young people”, and ensure youngsters shape local services.”
“There should be a duty placed on local authorities to ensure that all young people can access youth services in their area, with the support and resourcing from the government to enable it.”
“In place of statutory and universal youth services we have seen the emergence of what we have called a new ‘knife crime industry’….the culmination of a much longer trend in the increasingly selective targeting of youth service funding”
Dr Elaine Williams and Professor Peter Squires
Rethinking Knife Crime: Policing, Violence and Moral Panic (2021)
Going forward
“We can consciously move the conversation beyond the knife and youth culture at every opportunity, and instead draw attention to the brutalising living conditions that have normalised violence in the everyday lives of many young people. We must reject racist discourse that blames culture instead of economic inequality and insist that all children and their families are able to live healthy, happy, and safe lives, within well-resourced communities.”
Dr Elaine Williams
The problem with ‘knife crime’; What’s in a label? (2022)
“we look to non-policing solutions to the challenges we face in society: solutions which put power and resources back in the hands of communities, and which have fairness, participation and social justice at their heart.”