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Saturday, December 29, 2007

Knife crime - influential report highlights Government failure

It is shocking to see a knife crime happens every 24 minutes in this nation - that's 5,500 serious crimes involving knives in just three months this year. (For more info, see The Independent article.)

As echoed in this blog since it started in 2006, a new report shows a failure to draw up a coherent Government strategy appears to be the major factor preventing violent knife use.

Study more details about this finding on the BBC site. The report is by King's College London criminologists.

Contrast this considered report with facts such as: fewer than one if five criminals using knives are jailed - see story in The Telegraph. And the occasions in which a knife was used in successful muggings have soared, from 25,500 in 2005 to 64,000 in the year to April 2007 (The Telegraph).

Once again it becomes clearer and clearer that the Government must step up to the task.

(Think I may have solved the technical problems with my blogging tool - I'm using a new computer! So, I intend to keep tracking knife crime matters vis this blog. As I've been away a little while, I'm going to work to better measure the knife crime landscape and put together a fresh assessment about what's going on, who's doing what etc. Watch this space...)

I've added a couple of new features to the blog so you can more easily track and read posts - you can now easily subscribe by e-mail or RSS feed. Just use the links in the top right section of this blog site.

For those who don't remember, I went to the assistance of a woman who was killed from knife wounds in an attack at a McDonalds restaurant in Chichester. See my previous blog post.