Guest Writers
Boxing Day stabbings: the knife-crime nightmare continues while the numbers jailed plummet
-
Written by Richard Barnbrook
The London knife-crime nightmare rages unabated with a double stabbing in Oxford Street in the midst of the Boxing Day sales. A fight in Foot Locker, in full view of shoppers, tragically resulted in a murder when an 18 year-old was stabbed in the heart. A further knifing occurred less than five hours later when a 21 year-old was stabbed in the thigh at Oxford Circus, but the victim fortunately survived.
Only three weeks earlier, on 2nd December, figures released by the Ministry of Justice showed that the proportion of people jailed for carrying a knife in England and Wales had fallen to its lowest level for more than three years. Only just over a fifth - 21% of offenders convicted of possession of a knife or offensive weapon between July and September 2011 were jailed.
The Metropolitan Police have been increasing the use of ‘stop and search’ in order to deter young people from carrying knives. However, this is clearly not enough to reverse the situation if the courts are not prepared to impose tough sentences on those who are caught, in order to force potential knife-carriers to make a double-take. If they think that they are going to get away with it, then would-be offenders, especially youngsters, will continue to arm themselves because they mistakenly see the carrying of a weapon as a form of protection. And the problem is an ever increasing one: the more people who are seen to get away with routinely carrying knives, the more others will be encouraged to adopt the practice.
In the Legal Aid and Sentencing Bill, the government proposes to introduce a mandatory minimum prison sentence of four months for teenagers aged 16 and 17 convicted of threatening people with knives and 6 months for those aged over 18 years. This may be a step in the right direction, but in my view it’s only a tiny one. For a start, the defendant (aged 16 or over) would need to be shown to have actually threatened someone, so simply carrying a knife would not qualify. Secondly, the likelihood is that the offender would only actually serve half the sentence, which means in practice just two/three months inside. We need to fight fire with fire and send out a much stronger message, with a minimum term to be actually served of at least a year for those under 18 and 3 years for adults convicted for possession of a weapon in a public place. Only when the fear of getting caught outweighs that of being stabbed will the battle even begin to appear winnable.
Meanwhile the tragic toll of those killed and maimed continues. What will it take for the politicians of all party's to get a grip?
