London’s Rising Knife Crime Epidemic

This year, there have been 29 knife fatalities that began with the murder of four young men at a New Year’s Eve party. On Thursday night, a 23-year-old man was fatally stabbed near Plumstead train station in south-east London eight days after a 21-year-old Romanian man had been murdered outside Stratford shopping centre. In London today, one fatality occurs every three days on average, stealing the lives of teenagers as young as 17. At this rate, London will be victim to more than 120 murders by the end of 2018, representing a 50% increase on 2017. Of the 29 fatalities in 2018, none have as yet reached trial. What is the cause for this spate of violence and what can be done to curb it?

There are many contributing factors. 'Postcode wars' - inter-estate conflict where gangs lay out territorial divisions - has claimed dozens of lives since it first emerged in Hackney at the start of the millenium. There are fears that it is rapidly resurging, particularly in the towns and districts of Tottenham, Hackney, Brixton, and Peckham. However, not all victims are affiliated to gangs, as evidenced by the murder of an 18-year-old teen in Woodford on 15th March who was fatally stabbed in the stomach waiting for transportation home after football training. Other causes include social media channels - providing platforms for one's emotion to easily turn into anger as gang members provoke one another - drugs and absent fathers. 

The recent increased spate of violence on the streets of the capital has been countered with a large-scale police operation. 100 armed police officers with dogs were recently dispatched to the streets of Tottenham and Woodford in the borough of Haringey. For the first time in its history, London’s Air Ambulance now treats more victims of knife crime (and shootings) than it does road accidents. In some cases, open chest surgery is performed twice per day on victims of knife crime. There is perhaps no single solution to London's knife culture epidemic. Police operations can likely contain knife crime within one area for a limited period of time, but there's no reason to presume that crimes won't resurge once police vacate the area. It is a stop-gap measure. What is of utmost importance is stopping young people from carrying knives in the first place. Such efforts to achieve this have been made through the 'Save a Life, Surrender Your Knife' initiative implemented in various UK cities whereby knives are surrendered anonymously, as demonstrated in Lancaster.

Additional solutions include increasing prison sentences, especially as there is a particular group of young repeat offenders who are dispensed short-term prison sentences. Longer sentences involving rehabilitative programmes could prevent future harm. ‘Stop and search’,  which empowers the police to stop, question and search someone suspected to be in possession of an illegal weapon (or drugs), has been increased. However, this can (and has on instances) fuel mistrust. Additionally, more capital could be injected into knife prevention initiatives. An advertising campaign has been launched on various social media platforms encouraging young people to go ‘knife free’, and the government has even considered establishing a 'secure school' for young offenders to help deal with the root causes of crime.

Eitherway, with an increase of 20% in knife crime across England and Wales in the twelve months to September 2017, 37,000 recorded offences involving knives in 2017, and fatal stabbings at their highest across England and Wales since 2010-2011, swift action needs to be taken.