The Home Secretary’s proposals on knife crime
I rather like the suggestion from the Home Secretary that people who are caught carrying knives should be taken to hospitals’ A&E departments, to see the families of stabbing victims and to prisons to meet people who have been convicted of these crimes to see the effects of stabbing. Unfortunately, it’s been met with less than rapturous applause; according to the BBC News article,
The Tories said more knife carriers should go to prison and the Lib Dems called Ms Smith’s plans “half-baked”
Let me explain why I support the proposals.
I don’t think most people who carry knives do so with the explicit intent of using them as a weapon. Rather, it is an interplay of bravado (both for the peer group and the individual), habituation and a misplaced sense of security. The proposals can do something to address these issues by demonstrating the effects of carrying knives and other blades.
Firstly, it can make the connection between carrying and using knives. If the assertion I make above is correct (I maintain, given that if everyone who carried a knife were using it with intent, we’d be in a much worse state), it would seem that people don’t make the conscious connection between carrying a knife (which can be seen as defensive) and an increased chance of that and other knives being used in an altercation. In all three ideas - hospital, family and prison - people can see that, often, it was not the wielder’s intention to commit a murder; it was made far more likely that murder would happen because they were carrying a knife.
Secondly - and here I’m thinking particularly about the hospital part - it very graphically shows the damage that knives can do. Knives are fairly commonplace objects - for eating, for DIY, as a penknife. Something like a meat cleaver is a banal object; we’re used to seeing them on television (cooking shows), in shops and in our homes. The banality of the object disguises the fearsome damage it can inflict and allows people to believe that it will do far less damage than it actually does; likewise for other bladed weapons. By showing that what could be an unremarkable altercation can quickly develop into a serious incident very quickly and that everyone involved is at risk, it could help to bring people’s appreciation of the risk posed by knives closer to reality.
Thirdly, it explains the longer term effects to both victims and perpetrators. It relates the carrying of a knife or blade - something banal, commonplace - to something quite shocking but which the people in question can relate to; a destroyed family. If they are empty of the milk of human kindness, seeing what a long sentence does to someone, from a similar situation doing similar things, and their family may elicit the same response through more self-interested means.
Let me add a caveat. It’s unfortunate that I have to add it, because it should be implied. No-one is suggesting that these should be the totality of measures to deal with knife crime. However, it seems, to me, to be possible that, at least in some circumstances, that some or all of these measures could deter people from carrying and using knives. I’d emphasise that these are not for people who have been convicted of an offence beyond the actual carrying of the knife. However, they may be able to reduce the incidence of carrying blades and hence the incidence of their use. These are measures that can be placed at the disposal of magistrates, police, teachers, youth leaders and whoever else might be appropriate that, with other methods, could have a role in reducing this type of crime. If that even saves a few lives, it has to be worth considering in a sober manner.
xD.
July 13th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Well written, but I still disagree.
I think it’s a similar idea to that of putting warnings or photos of diseased body parts on the outside of cigarette packets. People have an unstoppable belief that “it won’t happen to me”.
I think that if these kids are shown what can happen to people at the wrong end of a knife, it won’t deter them from carrying one, it will merely make them more determined to use it more skilfully.
Plus you’ve got to deal with the victims and the families of victims who may well not be ready to have themselves paraded as examples to the arrogant youth.
You may have gathered that I don’t exactly love the youth of today. But I also just can’t believe that even if you get these kids to witness and understand and believe the awful results of knife crime, that they’d actually care. They’d just think “I better make even more sure I carry a knife to protect myself incase I get threatened by someone with a knife”.
I’ve no idea what the answer is. “Kill them all” just doesn’t really sit well with my (bordering on) nice-people-against-bad-things morals.
We could just let them stab each other until none are left.
Anyway.
xxxx
July 14th, 2008 at 1:03 am
Psychopaths/Sociapaths feel nothing for humanity anyway - So to “Punish” them by taking them into some over-stretched and over-run hospital, will be no more than a glossy soundbite for media purposes only.
Besides - Given this “Regimes” record on such “Projects” - by next week - this stories spin will be forgotten, and they’ll be addressing the next big governmental crisis (usually of their own making) - Whatever that may be. (and no - afore you ask - I’m not a rabid Tory - Iv as yet - never voted for them - but this government - ahhh give me strength!!!
July 14th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
I too am a bit skeptical, at least of the scared straight thinking behind some of these proposals.
In part that’s because of reading the first chapter of a book about randomised trials. The book points out that a review of the research:
As Alice says shock tactics only seem to work on those who are least likely to undertake the behaviour we’re trying to be shocking about.
July 15th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Andrew; I will pick up a copy of that book as it sounds interesting. I’d say, though, that the measures above are aimed at people who have been caught carrying knives but otherwise haven’t committed a crime with them.
Reversepsychology; they’re not psychopaths. According to DSM-IV, antisocial personality disorder - the nearest analogue - has a male lifetime incidence of about 3% and a female lifetime incidence of about 1%. If they were all psychopaths, we’d be in a far worse situation. I think to brand everyone in the lumpenproletariat as incorrigibly evil is self-evidently false.
Alice; these aren’t the be-all and end-all of dealing with knife crime, but tools that can be made available. You said
To an extent, I agree; some of them wouldn’t be affected and I concede that some might be affected, as you suggest, in the wrong way and feel more of a need to arm themselves. However, some might well take the message or, at least, start to take the message.
I know that I’m the original bleeding-heart liberal (there’s a phrase that might come back to haunt me) but I don’t see ‘locking them all up’ as a viable alternative.
xD.