It has been well highlighted recently in the press the amount of knife crime in our country. If you watch the news a lot you may be forgiven for thinking knife crime is on the increase and the nation is being swept by a crime wave. Well I'm afraid you're all mistaken. Crime IS falling overall. I believe the press has over hyped knife crime thus raising our fears about it. This doesn't mean however that I am not shocked by such young people dying at such young ages.
We must not forget that knife crime is rare and concentrated in small areas of the UK, mostly deprived inner city areas such as Moss Side in Manchester. In fact where I live in the South West (Bristol), there have been only 12 reported attacks from knives so far this year. 12 victims out of millions of people. For me this shows how much this is blown out of proportion.
However if we are to stop these young stabbings we must understand why people carry knives? One answer that's been circulating is that young people feel vulnerable so they carry a knife for protection. If this is the case then the most obvious way to tackle this is by increasing the number of police on our streets and getting them to have more strategic patrol areas. What I mean by that is, if there is an area with a high concentration of knife crime, the number of police in that area should be increased. If people see more police patrolling the streets they will feel more protected and the incentive to carry a knife will be reduced. Combine this with the current tougher measures for carrying knives, people will think twice before walking out the house with a knife in case they get caught.
There is also the issue of unemployment. It has been shown in the past that there is a positive correlation between crime and unemployment. Indeed you find many areas with a high concentration of knife crime also have a high unemployment rate. A lot of politicians talk about getting these people jobs and then believing the crime rate will fall. I believe it is not that simple. You hear politicians saying that crime doesn't pay. Well that is obviously untrue because if crime doesn't pay, people wouldn't commit crime. Criminals believe they can make more money committing crimes such as drug dealing than getting a proper job.
My solution to this is to take a more liberal approach to drugs in this country. I can guarantee that if cannabis was legalised, crime rates would fall. This is because immediately drug dealers would have no one to deal to as everyone would be buying drugs the legal way. The only drugs in my opinion that should remain banned are cocaine and heroin. All the others should be de-criminalised as in Holland and be strictly regulated and heavily taxed. This would put many drug dealers out of business and they would search for new work, which may be more favourable than drug dealing.
After all this I must point out that despite the statistics claiming that crime has fallen, they do not include statistics for crimes committed or involving under 16 year olds. It would be interesting to see those statistics. Despite that I think this is all blown out of proportion and we should not be so worried about crime and if we are going to tackle young people getting stabbed then we need to address why people carry knives by putting more police on the street in high crime areas, and legalise drugs to take drug dealers off the street meaning that there is no longer any crimes to commit that will pay.
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