Is there a deterrent to stop knife crime?

Now, with Operation Early Dawn, what impact will prison overcrowding have on those who are already brazenly carrying knives?

Youths brazenly brandishing knives on our streets is now as much part of our way of life as going to buy bread. No one is shocked at the sight of a male, hooded, wearing a mask and holding a knife. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t even go reported now due to the large scale amount of incidents with knives happening on our streets daily.

The Metropolitan Police reported a 21% increase in knife crime-a total of 15,016 between 2023/2024. An increase from the 12,786 in 2022. Are we surprised? No, not at all.

When you cut funding to the police, you cut police numbers on the street, you under fund local governments-they have consequences. As police officers have been shouting for years –cuts have consequences.

Interestingly enough for us Londoners we are used to knife incidents, when meeting tourists their view point ironically is equally the same. One tourist I recently met told me, “We heard London was really bad for stabbings, it was one of the worries we had coming here. We have seen groups of youths in certain parts that have made us feel uncomfortable but fortunately we have not been threatened as yet!” I hope that has remained the same and that they were able to leave London without being robbed at knife point.

Everytime a cordon goes up, residents report-“It must be another stabbing.” A common assumption that sadly is often right.

Now, with Operation Early Dawn, what impact will prison overcrowding have on those who are already brazenly carrying knives? Is their a deterrent for them? What impact will our over crowded prisons have on those who go out out tooled up?

Bereaved parents for years and years have been asking for a review to the Justice System, asking to work with those in authority to start to make changes that will help slow down knife crime. But as they frequently state-nobody cares.

There are many fantastic anti knife crime campaigners who do a truly remarkable job out on our streets each day. They are the ones making a difference. Endless teams of police officers engaging with our youths in a variety of different programmes that really provide our youths with ways forward.

It has become a tiresome issue for most to deal with. Most officers are so accustomed to taking bladed weapons off our streets that it doesn’t even get mentioned anymore.

For those of you enquiring who tackles knife crime-then look at frontline officers, schools officers, bereaved parents, and anti knife crime campaigners. As for the rest-no one is interested, and so it will remain.

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