Can the UK's knife crime 'epidemic' be tamed?

As Labour and the Conservatives get into election mode, their pledges and ideas to tackle knife crime are under increasing scrutiny.

There is some debate over whether recent knife crime statistics amount to an upward trend, or a return to business as usual after a significant drop during the pandemic. There were nearly 49,000 crimes in England and Wales involving knives or sharp objects during the year ending September 2023, according to newly published Home Office statistics – an increase of 5% year on year. 

But that is still 5% lower than the year ending March 2020, before the start of the pandemic, noted the BBC.

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Keir Starmer has promised to "get a grip" on the issue, and has set out Labour proposals to "give each knife crime offender a bespoke plan to tackle their reoffending", said The Times, as part of "wider plans for a more interventionist approach to violent crime". 

Rishi Sunak, meanwhile, is proposing amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill that would increase the maximum penalty for making, selling or possessing banned weapons from six months to two years.

What did the commentators say?

Knife crime in London has "leapt by more than a fifth in the last year", said the London Evening Standard. And in rural areas, offences of knife possession have doubled in the past decade, compared with a 60% rise in urban police force areas, according to Labour analysis of Office for National Statistics (ONS) data.

Labour has said that "every young person caught with a knife will face a sanction such as jail, tagging, curfew, fine or behavioural contracts", said The Telegraph. 

The Tories are already trying to clamp down on the sale and possession of so-called "zombie-style" knives and machetes. This is "the government's third attempt at banning the weapons", said the BBC, after a legal loophole was found last year.

The mother of Grace O'Malley-Kumar, who was stabbed and killed in Nottingham last year, has called for mandatory prison sentences for carrying a knife. The "lethal weapon" is "no different" to carrying a gun, Dr Sinead O'Malley told the broadcaster.

But Hollywood actor and prominent knife crime campaigner Idris Elba has argued against a "one size fits all" approach. Elba pointed out that, although deterrents were an important consideration, some people – usually young men – carry knives out of fear. "We do not want to criminalise these people without offering them an opportunity to feel safe, to feel that their whole community is involved," Elba told BBC "Breakfast".

It's true that "a small quiet fearfulness is eroding public spaces", said Sarah Ditum in The Sunday Times, and that rising non-fatal attacks such as muggings and robberies are causing more boys to carry weapons because they feel "unsafe". This is "also about status", she said, and "carrying a weapon is a way for a boy to make himself look big". What's needed "is a serious approach to the problems faced by boys, and serious study of why some fall into nihilistic criminality and others – despite suffering all the same afflictions of poverty and background – don't."

"Few will disagree with Elba's practical solution" of urging the government to speed up the ban on machetes and zombie knives, said Sebastian Milbank in The Spectator.  The idea that social workers can "sort out the majority of criminal behaviour" is "invariably presented as a panacea", but successful examples of "public health" and community approaches to violence are "anything but non-punitive", Milbank continued. 

"Steering offenders away from violence can work, but it takes the real threat of prison, confronting the effects of their actions, and effective policing to get people to make better choices when offered an alternative to crime."

What next?

Elba and his fellow campaigners "have to overcome many stumbling blocks in their path if they want to see progress", said Milbank – "from a dysfunctional Met to a flailing government to a prim liberal establishment that wishes the problem would go away". 

Ultimately, said Ditum, "it's futile to argue about whether stop and search could be effective when there's no reason to believe the police have the resources or the public support to enact it".

Knife crime, she said, is emblematic of "the desolation of the country's social fabric: the diminishment of policing, the failures of justice, the collapse of the contract between families and schools".