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More teenagers stabbed this weekend in London, number 16 & 17 to be precise. We are half way through the year and it looks like we are well on course to beat 2007’s record of 27 teenage deaths by knife in one year.
Is this just a London problem with teenage stabbings or is it a country wide problem but just don’t get reported ? And what can be done about it.
If it was up to me it would be Ten years just for carrying one and I don’t care if you was only a teenager at the time of drunk, Ten years no excuses ! But it will never happen because the Government is spineless, and don’t think for one moment it would be any different under the conservatives, they are all spineless !My son was stabbed at school last year, yes it was only with a compass but I am scared, what if the lil blighter had a knife on him, would he have stabbed him with that?
The school excluded the lil shit for just a few days and they had the community police officer in, whoopiefuckingdoo!
Get um young I say, also fine the parents! :twisted:
June 5, 2008
Knife-carrying youths face automatic prosecution as street violence spirals
Richard Ford, Home Correspondent
Youths who carry knives face tougher sentences under new guidelines to be agreed at Downing Street talks on violent crime today.Anyone over the age of 16 who is caught with a knife will face automatic prosecution and risk a jail sentence of up to four years.
The change, rushed through after a spate of stabbings, could affect hundreds of youths who until now have escaped with a caution or a warning. It reflects growing frustration among police forces across the UK at the number of offenders who admit possessing a knife in public but who are not prosecuted in the courts.
Police will press for the new rule to be put into law rather than just being issued as guidance. They say that this will strengthen the position of officers dealing with knife crimes.
“That’s why the whole House will agree that it is right that the presumption that we prosecute should now extend to 16-year-olds as well.”
The Association of Chief Police Officers had been drawing up the first set of national guidelines to be issued to every force in England and Wales recommending the prosecution of anyone over the age of 18 found in possession of a knife. After a series of attacks involving younger people, the association has now lowered the age to 16.
The guidance says there should be an expectation that anyone over 16 should be charged and prosecuted in court. However, ministers have to decide yet which policy to adopt towards those under 16, as they do not want to criminalise children.
The Government is resisting pressure from the Police Federation, which represents rank and file officers, for a minimum sentence for anyone caught in possession of a knife. It will remain for the courts to decide whether someone convicted should be fined, given a community punishment or sent to jail.
Latest figures from the Ministry of Justice show that in 2006 more than half of all those over the age of 10 caught in possession of a knife received a caution or final warning. A total of 3,330 were cautioned and 2,987 convicted in the courts.
About 95 per cent of 10 to 17-year-olds found with a knife were cautioned in 2006.
The figures also show that since 1997 only six people who were convicted of possessing a knife received the old maximum two-year prison sentence. Figures are not yet available for how many have been given the new four- year maximum sentence because it came into force only in February.
Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: “Recently a worrying trend has emerged in relation to knife crime. We are seeing both an intensification in the severity of offending, and a worrying change in the age profile of offenders and victims.
“We need to send out a signal to those who carry knives for no good reason, that they can expect the police service to do its best to get them before a court.”
However, senior police officers want to ensure that the new guidance will be flexible enough to allow for what one source described as “common-sense policing” by officers.
The Police Federation gave warning that without robust policing, laws and penalties would not deal with the problem. Simon Reed, vice-chairman, said: “We need police officers on the streets encountering these people and making them think they are going to be caught.”
@pete wrote:
June 5, 2008
Anyone over the age of 16 who is caught with a knife will face automatic prosecution and risk a jail sentence of up to four years.
The figures also show that since 1997 only six people who were convicted of possessing a knife received the old maximum two-year prison sentence
Thats the problem, not will get a jail sentence, but risk a jail sentence.
Not get four years, but upto four years(really means let off painting an old ladies shed)Its’ all to soft :roll:
When i was at school back in the 80’s sian i saw a boy try to cut another boys finger off with a knife because he threw a ball at him by mistake in the playground. He cut it all the way down to the bone and tore the finger off the bone right in front of me. He got suspended for two weeks and the other boy never came back to school because he was too scared to.
@pete wrote:
June 5, 2008
Knife-carrying youths face automatic prosecution as street violence spirals
Richard Ford, Home Correspondent
Youths who carry knives face tougher sentences under new guidelines to be agreed at Downing Street talks on violent crime today.Anyone over the age of 16 who is caught with a knife will face automatic prosecution and risk a jail sentence of up to four years.
The change, rushed through after a spate of stabbings, could affect hundreds of youths who until now have escaped with a caution or a warning. It reflects growing frustration among police forces across the UK at the number of offenders who admit possessing a knife in public but who are not prosecuted in the courts.
Police will press for the new rule to be put into law rather than just being issued as guidance. They say that this will strengthen the position of officers dealing with knife crimes.
“That’s why the whole House will agree that it is right that the presumption that we prosecute should now extend to 16-year-olds as well.”
The Association of Chief Police Officers had been drawing up the first set of national guidelines to be issued to every force in England and Wales recommending the prosecution of anyone over the age of 18 found in possession of a knife. After a series of attacks involving younger people, the association has now lowered the age to 16.
The guidance says there should be an expectation that anyone over 16 should be charged and prosecuted in court. However, ministers have to decide yet which policy to adopt towards those under 16, as they do not want to criminalise children.
The Government is resisting pressure from the Police Federation, which represents rank and file officers, for a minimum sentence for anyone caught in possession of a knife. It will remain for the courts to decide whether someone convicted should be fined, given a community punishment or sent to jail.
Latest figures from the Ministry of Justice show that in 2006 more than half of all those over the age of 10 caught in possession of a knife received a caution or final warning. A total of 3,330 were cautioned and 2,987 convicted in the courts.
About 95 per cent of 10 to 17-year-olds found with a knife were cautioned in 2006.
The figures also show that since 1997 only six people who were convicted of possessing a knife received the old maximum two-year prison sentence. Figures are not yet available for how many have been given the new four- year maximum sentence because it came into force only in February.
Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: “Recently a worrying trend has emerged in relation to knife crime. We are seeing both an intensification in the severity of offending, and a worrying change in the age profile of offenders and victims.
“We need to send out a signal to those who carry knives for no good reason, that they can expect the police service to do its best to get them before a court.”
However, senior police officers want to ensure that the new guidance will be flexible enough to allow for what one source described as “common-sense policing” by officers.
The Police Federation gave warning that without robust policing, laws and penalties would not deal with the problem. Simon Reed, vice-chairman, said: “We need police officers on the streets encountering these people and making them think they are going to be caught.”
yawn
^^^^
Good to see intellectual stimluating debate isnt dead then
What interests me (and blows much of the likes of EmmaLush’s arguments out of the water)- 16 out of 17 of these murders are on black kids; IF there had been 17 murders on white kids in London this year, do you think the press coverage would have been different?
It is very very tragic and the government seem stricken with inertia
Control of the streets was lost a long time ago, and so was any degree of effective policing. The deterrents are quite simply a joke, and made worse by the ridiculous over-riding respect for the rights of criminals, at the expense of any moral social imperative for the larger community involved. Government policies seem almost to guarantee more crime, but these are presented to an electorate that only reflects the minority anyway. Nobody is impressed by the reassuring soundbites coming from whoever is the latest incumbent in the Home Office. Murders will continue to be commited by children.
It can be sorted out, but that would need real political will from the very top of a party looking for election in what would be five or six years from now. But don’t hold your breath. I’d give a lot not to sound so cynical but realise that to gain the power required the party involved has to make so many deals on the way, and then sell its ideas to that minority we call an electorate, that any firm resolve is inevitably watered down in a welter of compromise.
Would ten-year terms of power be the answer ? And would that mobilise the necessary opinion that already exists ?
My friends son was stabbed to death in London last year, his girlfriend was pregnant. Do you really think those that carry knives actually think through what they are doing? Or when they actually use it do they think its just like givin someone a hard punch?
We were threatened by a guy with a knife a few years back, he punched me in the face about 10 times and each time I got up. Because we kept coming back at him, he then jumped in his car and waved this big knife around. We pulled his car door almost off before that, but as soon as the knife was waved we were off. The warning was enough and Im damn sure he’d have used it.
I still remember his face and name and he is known to police but has never been done for it. What crime is waving a knife these days?
I can’t wait to watch the programs on teenage violence which start on monday at 9 on 4, lets see what the parents have to say!
@*Sian wrote:
My son was stabbed at school last year, yes it was only with a compass but I am scared, what if the lil blighter had a knife on him, would he have stabbed him with that?
The school excluded the lil shit for just a few days and they had the community police officer in, whoopiefuckingdoo!
Get um young I say, also fine the parents! :twisted:
I once stabbed James Phillips in the back of the hand with a compass during double Latin. I got a detention. I think kids are too harshly dealt with these days, really. I think you and I might have both been in a spot more bother than we were if we had to live our adolescences in today’s climate, Runway.
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