The Great Knife Controversy

There are children in this country too young to get married, drive an automobile or join the army who still go to school every day with a razor sharp blade concealed in their homework books.

Britain's youngsters are no longer the bright eyed innocents of yesteryear. Knife crime among our young people has risen ten fold in a decade. Parts of London now make New York look positively safe. Our city is witnessing a frightening tally of death and injury, inflicted by knives and executed by thugs who are barely out of diapers.

Over the same period, New York has seen a cut in all violent crime of 41 percent. Someone's getting the policy right. And it doesn't look like us.

Last weekend, in a ludicrous effort to make Prime Minister Gordon Brown's limping and unpopular government look decisive, the Minister in charge of dealing with crime announced an extraordinary initiative.

This was the idea. Anyone caught carrying a knife would be arrested and marched to a hospital where they could see the real results, the cuts and the blood, close up and personal. They'd be allowed to meet victims' families and then, maybe, whisked away to the nearest prison to chat to convicted knife criminals. In such ways, it was suggested, they would learn.

Our nation watched this nonsense pour from the serious lips of a lady called Jacqui Smith, whose title is Home Secretary, and whose job is supposed to be making us all feel much safer.

Ms. Smith made our flesh run cold. Policemen complained. Politicians looked aghast. And Doctors shook their heads in disbelief. After all, the overworked medics in the ER were hardly likely to welcome potential killers just to satisfy a Government public relations exercise.

And though the Government tried to say they'd got the idea from America they forgot to mention that similar schemes in your country haven't really achieved a great deal.

Twenty four hours later the new policy was shelved. So we still have rising knife crime. But we also have a dangerously accident prone Government that can't make its mind how to deal with it. This wasn't a policy. It was a crime.
By Ed Boyle