Knife Crime and Youth Justice - Policy, Policing, Race, Social Status - Essay Example

An Essay About Knife Crime And Youth Justice. Looking At Issues such as Policy, Policing, Race, Social Status Etc Introduction Knife carrying is justified by the carriers as a means of protection or enhanced status. At the end of 2007, selling a knife, an imitation gun or an air rifle to any person less than eighteen years old was made illegal. An amount of £ 5 million was set apart for identifying ‘knife hot spots’ by the use of electronic metal detectors and giving the police new powers to stop and search, in the year 2008. BBC carried a news on 7 July 2008, that while the Prime Minister wanted to have presumption to prosecute over-16 year olds carrying knives, the leader of the Opposition insisted on the presumption to incarcerate any one found to carry knife without a good reason. One factor that failed to be noticed was that both the offenders and victims of knife crime were from the less privileged or disadvantaged neighbourhood societies and that increasing youth crime could be attributed to the youth’s lack of trust in adults in their ability to protect them. (Muncie, 2009, p 36).This state of affairs makes a compelling study of knife crime as to why and how it occurs and the policy measures of the British government. How far policing, racial and social status exacerbate the crime also need to be examined. History of youth crime As knife crime is invariably associated with the youth, it would be worthwhile tracing the history in this connection to arrive at the roots of the present day status of knife crime. Youth behaviour is traceable through the last two centuries but childhood experience had never been given much importance. In fact, reverse was true in that infanticide and abandonment of newborn were widely prevalent until late eighteenth century and the practice of disposing of illegitimate children extended into nineteenth century also. Boys were considered as of greater value than girls and any child considered as imperfect met with premature death. High mortality rates prevailing at the time due to disease conditions, aggravated deaths of babies and young children. Thus, babies and young children were the victims of societal attitudes as well as otherwise high mortality rates. This was partly responsible for the term or the fact of ‘childhood’ not receiving its due attention as observed by the social historian Philippe Aries (1962) according to whom there had been no terminology to refer to distinguish infants from juveniles and juveniles from adults during the middle ages. His statement that prior to seventh century there had been no conception of childhood, adolescence or youth has however been challenged by Pollock (1983) who in her studies has concluded that at no time had the childhood suffered from parental indifference as parents had always an emotional attachment towards their children. Likewise deMause (1976) also says that there was indeed some conception of childhood and enjoyed a special status in life course unlike Philippe’s claim that it was later invented or discovered. But what Philippe challenged was the orthodoxy which viewed the childhood as just a biological state. Earlier during pre-industrial period, children had always moved with their parents in every day life, in work and in sport in greater degree than they are today. They now live in a separate world indulging in drinking, manual work and gambling that are considered inappropriate. (Muncie, 2009 p 48-49) Knife crime While gun crime is neither widespread nor prolific, knife crime is widespread in that between 1997 and 2006, conviction of young people increased from 482 to 1265 though the extent of knife related crime is not clear. According to British Crime Survey (BCS), knife-crime was 6-7 percent of all the crimes and 30 percent of homicides alone. The survey in 2007 by Metropolitan police claimed that knife crime dropped by 15.7 per cent from 12,122 to 10,220 during the previous two years as per the news item of Guardian of May 2008. Total murders in London had the reducing trend for the fifth year in succession up to 2007 from 222 in 2003 to 160 in 2007. However, number of teenagers killed rose from 17 to 26 by 50 percent. Since there is no separate classification of death due to knife, year to year compassion is not possible. (Muncie, 2009 p 34-35) Seventh Report 2008-09 Great Britain: Parliament: House of commons: Home Affairs Committee, House of Commons Key facts and figures released by the above report indicate that knife homicides rose by 26.9 per cent between 2005-06 and 2006-07. It increased to 270 knife homicides in 2007-08 which is the highest ever recorded homicide since 1977 when Homicide Index was introduced. BCS has found that 6 per cent of violent incidents involved use of knives in the year 2007-08, corresponding to 138,000 robberies, woundings or assaults for the entire England and Wales. 5,239 persons were hospitalised in NHS institutions in England due to stab wounds in2007-08 and this represented an increase of 48 per cent between 1997-98 and 2006-08. BCS survey also indicates that the median age of knife crime victims reduced since 2004-05. Thus, stab-related hospital admissions for people aged under16 rose by 62.7% between 2003 and 2007. Kitchen knives have been frequently used for causing injuries though penknives and flick knives are generally carried by the offenders. 85 per cent of young people who carry knives say that they are forced to carry for protection. 21 per cent of convictions for carrying of the offensive weapons resulted in jail term in the last quarter of 2008. More than 50 percent of the prisoners re-offend within a year of their release. It has been found that five per cent of young people commit half of youth related crimes and they come from 110,000 high risk families and 20,000 of them require intensive interventions. Kids Count, an organisation has estimated that knife crime costs the state exchequer an amount of £ 1.25 per year. (Great Britain…House of commons, 2008-09, p5) Definition of knife crime It is the media which started the use of knife crime and there is no Home Office definition of the crime. It is used to indicate stabbings and also to the illegal carrying of knives by young people in public places or on school premises. Knife inflicted crime includes offences related to bladed weapons. It is an offence to cause or threaten harm by knife and if used in robberies or assault, the nature of offence is considered even more seriously. It is also illegal to safeguard, hide or transport a dangerous weapon on somebody’s behalf, to market a knife in a manner that would induce violent behaviour and to sell a knife to persons of less than 18 years of age. (Great Britain…House of commons, 2008-09, p 6-7) The trend of knife crime Overall crime levels rose by the second half of the twentieth century reaching a maximum level in 1995. Since 1995, crime rate has fallen by 48% as per the BCS survey. However academicians like Dr Marian FitzGerald dispute the official statistics as having failed to observe the growth of serious violent crime. As for the knife crime, fatal stabbings increased by 26.9 per cent in 2006-07 after registering a decline from 2003. Non-fatal knife crime as per the BCS formed 6 % of the total non-fatal crimes in 2007-08. That is out 2,164,000 non fatal violent crimes, 138,000 involved knives. The percentage has remained below 8% since 1995. The hitting implements are the most common weapon used in 7 % of the violent incidents but 76 % of the violent incidents did not involve knives. The report says that while violent crime overall has declined by 12 per cent, proportion of knife related incidents has remained stable. Knife inflicted woundings in 1995 numbered 84,000 and in 2003-04, 29,000 and it rose to 38,000 in 2007-08. The report of the House of Commons however observes that it is not possible to draw any conclusions from the data provided by the Home office as for the use of knife in non-fatal violent crime because of limitations in their source data which also does not establish any clear trends. However, the BCS shows that knife violence fell drastically between 1995 and 2003-04 as in the overall crime incidence but it rose again in 2006-07. (Great Britain…House of commons, 2008-09, p13) Ministry of Justice’s figures indicate that convictions for carrying a knife rose from 3,360 in 1997 to 6,314 in 2006. Arrests for possession of knife or similar objects on school premises increased by 500 percent from the year 1999 to 2005. This may perhaps be due to accelerated levels of police search activity rather than a real increase between the said periods as observed in the report of the House of Commons. The Detective Chief Superintendent John Carnocahn has said that the official statistics have no relevance for the people actually affected. He says that only fifty percent of the occurrence of violence is actually reported to the police. Hence, increase or decrease in the crime as per the official statistics is of absolute irrelevance. A community worker is reported to have said that the Government’s complacency about knife carrying would only normalise the knife-carrying. The House of Commons’ report admits that the picture of knife possession is actually complicated. The 2008 MORI Youth Survey indicates that 31 per cent of young people of age 11-16 in the main stream education carry knife and 61 per cent of the excluded young people have carried knife at some point other. However, the Crime and Justice Survey of the Home Office Offending (OCJS) for 2006 found only 3 per cent of the persons between 10-25 years of age actually carried knife. The discrepancy may perhaps be due to the MORI survey’s inclusion of legitimate carrying whereas the OCGS has a wider coverage. Regardless of the discrepancy, the House of Commons Report concludes that knife carrying in England and Wales is at a significant level.( Great Britain…House of commons, 2008-09, p15-16) Government’s Response The Tackling Knives Action Programme (TAKP) was implemented by the Government pledging an additional funding of £ 5 million for the ten police force areas in England and Wales wherein the affected areas by knife-crime are Essex, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside, Metropolitan, Nottinghamshire, South Wales, Thames Valley, West Midlands and West Yorkshire. The programme aims to intensify searches, concentrate on targeted and intelligence-led operations and to complement new portable knife arches and search wands. Tracking of all young people convicted of a knife offence by teaching them with the consequence of knife crime through ‘knife referral project’ and home visits and letters to parents of young people known to carry knives and other weapons are also part of the TAKP. A further funding of £ 3.4 millions for investments in after-school patrols and Safer Schools Partnerships has also been made by the Government in December 2008. This envisages police officers being posted at schools and surveillance of about 7,000 places on Fridays and Saturdays at TAKP areas. The TAKP originally funded till March 2009 has been extend for one more year with addition of Hampshire and Kent areas. Impact of the TAKP programme as per the HES data which is provisional is that there has been a decline of 8.43 per cent for the year of TAKP implementation. (Great Britain…House of commons, 2008-09, p 17) Increased punishment Noting that the carrying of knife or gun cannot be tolerated as a right, the increase in the penalty from two to four years imprisonment for knife has been justified. However, judges and magistrates should not be in lenient in sentencing those found to carry knives. (Great Britain….Justice Committee, 2009, p32-33) Race The Mayor of London has expressed concern at the differential sentencing of black people. In London, 44 % young people serving the custodial sentences are blacks given the fact that only 18 % of black people aged 14-18 are young people. The disproportionality is apparent and it reveals the racial bias as in the last three years, this trend is worsening. (Great Britain….Justice Committee, 2009, p 34) Gender In the recent years, punishment of girls has also increased disproportionally given that the period between 1993 and 2006 witnessed an increase of sentencing of boys by 55% as against an increase of 297 % in the sentencing of girls. This is reflective of gender bias too. The Mayor of London has expressed that in sentencing of girls, their vulnerability and circumstances should be given due consideration. ( Great Britain….Justice Committee, 2009, p35) Discussion and conclusion Zulueta (2008) mentions an anonymous quotes that “the relevance lies not in the weapons they carry; it is in the mind that holds the weapon.” She recalls the £ 100 million Youth Crime Action Plan (YCAP) to tackle the knife crime which has exited for hundreds of years but has reached a critical mass now. The media coverage presents the crime to the criminologists on daily basis and more importantly to the young people who are threatened by it. Actually, the YACP programme was to make feel people safer. But even before the plan was published, researchers on child violence provided evidence that was contrary the assumptions of the government policy. The author who comes from primitive tribes of hunters and gatherers, finds it difficult to countenance the sight of a 10 year old boy stabbing another child. The children live in their communities with the compulsive feeling to protect themselves. They are also under the constant fear of being stopped by the police. It is very difficult to digest the fact that a child is stabbing another simply because he feels disrespected. The author cites the reasons for such a behaviour as follows; emotional abuse, physical abuse and sexual abuse. Physical and emotional neglect. Household dysfunction such as mother being treated violently, household use of drugs or alcohol, presence of mental illness, parental separation or divorce and incarcerated household member. It is also stated that the more adverse childhood experiences a child has endured, the more they are likely to suffer from obesity, ischemic heart disease, stroke, chest disease, diabetes, hepatitis, sexually transmitted diseases, and depression. They are prone to smoking, alcohol and attempt suicide. Moreover, there is a greater risk of being sexually assaulted as an adult if a woman, being a victim of domestic violence and perpetrating domestic violence. In the understanding of human behaviour, the author says that the brain substrate of attachment behaviour is associated with the large part of the right hemisphere and the supraorbital area of the brain that determines the human capacity to empathise with others. It is also associated with limbic system and paralimbic system. Since the infant’s brain is moulded by its experiences with its caregivers, the caregivers have the responsibility to attune to the infant’s signals which is very important in the first two years of life. This is achieved by holding, caressing, smiling, stimulating or calming the infant. The modulation and stimulation between the child and the caregiver enables the child’s brain to develop to both modulate affect and communicate emotional states. Thus, the care giver should demonstrate reflective functioning by giving meaning to the child’s experiences and predicting their behaviour. This is the interaction in a child that puts the child in the mind of others. This results in people’s ability to understand one another. Such a protection of the child will prevent them from developing post-traumatic stress disorder in potentially traumatic situations. There is also evidence that such children subjected to above said abuses can be corrected with an empathic understanding by an outsider such as teacher, health worker or a relative by compensating what the child had undergone in the formative years. It is said that in the first two years of life, the 50 trillion synapses present in the brain at the time of birth explode into 1,000 trillion synapses. The effect of severe neglect emotionally and absence of stimulation would prevent the effect of “huge increase in brain connections resulting from the combined interaction of both genetically induced developmental pathways and the external stimulation and emotional modulation provided by the infant’s attachment figures. Some of the synapses are formed and hardwired as a result of stimulation while others are pruned or dissolved due to lack of it” (Zulueta, 2008, p 68-75) The knife crime as seen above shows that much depends on the attitude of criminal justice system and the authorities towards the young offenders which should reflect a sense of correctional approach through proper psychological counselling and treatment in homes and hospitals rather than sentencing them to undergo imprisonment even if they are found to re-offend. The root cause lies in the manner they are treated in their infancy and the problem of knife crime should be approached with compassion and care by the criminal justice system and the Governmental machinery. Reference Philippe Aries (1962) quoted in Muncie John, 2009, Youth and Crime, Sage Muncie John, 2009, Youth and Crime, Sage deMause (1976) quoted in Muncie John, 2009, Youth and Crime, Sage Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Justice Committee, 2009, Draft sentencing guideline: overarching principles - sentencing youths, tenth report of session 2008-09, report, together with formal minutes, oral and written evidence Hc, Tenth Report of Session 2008-09 - Report, Together With Formal Minutes, Oral and Written Evidence,House of Commons papers, The Stationer Office Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Home Affairs Committee, House of Commons, Knife Crime, 2008-09, Knife crime: seventh report of session 2008-09, [Vol. 1]: Report, together with formal minutes Volume 1 of Knife Crime, Stationery Office. Pollock (1983) quoted in Muncie John, 2009, Youth and Crime, Sage Zulueta de Felicity, 2008, Origins of violence: a story of damaged brains and damaged minds in Blyth Maggie and Solomon Enver, 2008, Prevention and Youth Crime: is early Intervention Working, The Policy Press Read More