A matter of knife and death

LAST year my son was beaten up in a club and I’ve never been more relieved. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t pretty.

The boy, then 20, had a broken bone in his wrist, stitches in his chin and trainer marks on his shirt where he’d been given a good kicking.

But it could have been so, so much worse. On the same weekend, in another nightclub in another city not too far away, Sam Cook was stabbed and killed while celebrating his 21st.

He too had been the innocent party in a row. But while the weapons of choice in my son’s case were fists and feet, in Sam’s it was a knife.

And while I wept for the state of my lad’s face and the cast on his arm, my tears will have been nothing compared to those of Sam’s family whose boy will never come home.

Knife crime is now a national emergency in this country. Barely a week goes by without a report about another young life lost, another family devastated, so the recent report by Home Affairs Select Committee report urging the government to get a grip on what’s happening is to be welcomed.

Now, though, those

recommendations need to be acted upon. And fast.

Because let’s be clear about this. The situation is – literally – life threatening.

There were 43,516 knife crime offences in the 12 months to the end of March this year – an 80% increase from a low point only five years earlier.

The number of people admitted to hospital with knife wounds has also shown an increase, with medics reporting injuries more severe than ever.

Victims are getting younger too. The peak time for a knife injury to occur isn’t in the wee small hours of the morning but between 4pm and 6pm. Teatime, in fact.

As with every other public health emergency there isn’t one factor which has led to this escalation in violence and it goes way beyond simple bad choices made by tanked-up idiots.

We can wring our hands all we like about cuts in police numbers and youth outreach services – and we should because both have been hit badly – but that’s not half the story.

Poverty, deprivation and the social inequality it brings play their part. So does addiction – whether drugs or alcohol – school exclusion and unemployment.

Tough life experiences can make some children vulnerable. That’s when drug dealers and gangs move in, preying on and exploiting thwarted aspirations with the lure of easy cash.

This perfect storm of events is happening right now and kids are dying because of it.

The committee’s report is a start but reports need to be turned into action and leadership.

Forget speeches, summits and meetings, we need investment in our communities and better education, improved children’s mental health services and help for troubled families.

The news that more police officers are to be recruited is to be welcomed but that’s just tackling things when they’ve already gone wrong.

Kids aren’t born with a knife in their hands so the root causes of violence need to be tackled from the get-go.

If we don’t, more children will fall through the cracks and, inevitably, more children will die.