Should parents be held more accountable to tackle teenage knife crime?

Parents should absolutely be responsible for their children. Blaming the government is a complete cop out. This latest appeal to online companies to be more diligent in knife sales to 'younger people' is very much akin to parents blaming the government in the first place.
Apart from the fact that if someone really wants to commit an atrocity such as these latest killings, there are so many kitchen implements available that it cannot make much of a difference.

I used to work with mentally ill adolescents. Which meant working with their families. You got the whole gamut from involved, caring, good parents whose kid was out of control/in with the wrong crowd, to the sort of parents who barely know their child is alive, let alone where they are, and what they are doing. The second sort will not respond to any initiatives unfortunately. And the former dont deserve any further pressure.

I think there should be longer sentences for carrying weapons. Even first offences should carry a long sentence

I would love to punish shit parenting- and that isn’t limited to kids who fall into gangs. However in the case of the most recent death, I think the mother should absolutely be punished- she let that boy down in unimaginable ways.

I think knife crime isn’t an issue that has just sprung up since the toddlers of 14 years ago grew up so I’m not sure there’s much in that theory as a direct link.

Although I do think the loss of Surestart is a terrible thing.

Stupid idea.

Knives are first and foremost culinary tools.

My teens are independent and cook their own meals often. I am not going to infantilise by not giving them access to them.

Are you expecting teens to get keys to the knife lock box on their 21st or something?

Exactly, and ignores the fact that a lot of “nice” middle class areas have a lot of “nice” middle class people who think nothing of taking a few lines of cocaine every now and again.

Who do they think is running that drug?

I agree.

Move to a nicer area is a bit like the suggestion from a Conservative MP, that everyone low paid should go and get a better job.

Plus county lines drug dealing is everywhere. I live in a low crime overall area but some kids still get drawn into it.

Absolutely, it was appalling

Parents should have some responsibility but are often feckless themselves. We recently had a child supplying and taking drugs at school - her dad supplied them

And imagine your child falls in with the wrong crowd, and despite your best efforts you can't get through to him - he's on a bad path and you don't know what to do, there are no support services to intervene because they've been decimated. Maybe he's smoking weed, despite you saying he's not allowed to smoke it in the house he just smokes it outside the house. Maybe that leads to him having delusions and mood swings. What if your son is bigger than you and if he wants to go out, he will simply push you out of the way and go out, or get violent.

What are you going to do about it?

Then Someone with an ulterior motive gives your son a knife as "protection". Your son gets into a situation where someone is stabbed.

You go to prison for 10 years. Is that fair?

It can happen to all of us. You think you're ok because you're watching your sons like a hawk. Doesn't mean that they can't be up to no good. You think you're better than any other parent and the others just aren't as vigilant as you - can't you see that the problem is more nuanced than that?

The two knives in your home aren't the only knives available to your child.

I suggest more money for schools in deprived areas, youth groups, tackling poverty, let these children feel like they've got a future and a community so they don't fall in with county lines and gangs. More money for Sen support in schools so that children with ASD/ADHD aren't falling through the cracks and ending up disillusioned and depressed. Tackle nhs waiting lists for camhs and SEN diagnosis services. Provide young people with support that they need to thrive.

You are looking at this from completely the wrong angle.

I worked in a supported accommodation unit for young people in the care system. They were older teenagers, who were usually with us because their foster placement had broken down.

These young people had a childhood full of neglect, their education was disrupted and at 15 years old found themselves living with 40 other homeless teens with no family and no support. Their social care allowance was just under £50 a week for absolutely everything except rent. Many of these young people were targeted by gangs because they were vulnerable, and so it begins.

Take a family with a single parent as another alternative. Housed in an estate, parent out working two jobs just to pay the bills, nothing left over. Teen is alone all day and night, seeing his “friends” with money. It’s an easy trap to fall in to.

Most of the teenagers you read about are not from stable, secure families. There parents are either absent, criminals, or just do not give a shit what their child is up to.

It’s a societal issue. Extreme poverty, adverse childhood experiences, lack of policing, lack of mental health support, no early intervention services. It’s not as simple as parents locking their knives up.

I mean I'm no expert but surely one of the biggest things that would help is for something to be done about the drugs trade.

Most of the gang violence is related to drugs - selling drugs, buying drugs, who controls the drug trade in what areas, turf wars, county lines etc etc.

I don't know what the answer is though. Legalisation perhaps, but that's not without problems.

Agree re parents blaming everyone else…I remember Hearingthe father of one of the Rotherham grooming victims who was in care at the time, she was 12. He blamed everyone else but didn’t explain why she was in care and why he hadn’t been in her life.

I don't think it's realistic to lock knives away and tbh a screwdriver can do as much damage.

I do however think that parents should be responsible for their children's behaviour, something sadly lacking in many. If this means charging them too fir their child's criminal behaviour, yes why not.

I read an article the other day of a 14 year old stabbed to death. He'd been in care between 9/10 and 14, living on the streets for a year. His mother was blaming society. On what I read, I blamed her, total lack of parenting.

I can’t help feel that fewer absent or non contributing
fathers might help (although I’m sure many women are only too glad some are out of their lives unfortunately). Boys need positive male role models around them to learn how to be a decent man, it’s hard to bring up boys as a single and perhaps isolated mother. It’s also very hard to keep children out of trouble in a rough area and it’s hard to move without help or resources.

Do you lock the knives and scissors away?

I couldn’t agree more. What was the expected outcome when all of these services were cut?

I'm mildly fixated on SureStart which I thought was a brilliant thing. I am positive there is a correlation between the closure of most SureStart centres 14 years ago and the rise in teenage knife crime now.

Added to the slashing of all local authority budgets, overworked teachers and social workers, etc etc, and it becomes a perfect storm (of the previous government's making)

Yes, of course, parents need to assume responsibility for their children, their whereabouts and their behaviour to a certain extent, but, we need to be educating parents on the signs to look for, what to do if you have concerns about your child's behaviour and educate children in knife crime and not by some stuffy politician or police officer, but by kids who have walked in their shoes, lived their lives.

We need investment in local areas so kids have things to do, places to "hang out" that are safe, bringing communities together again rather than people not caring about their neighbours.

Giving kids in the area that want to turn their lives around a purpose. Invest in them, allow them to run groups to help keep others out of street life.

If your child is carrying a knife, as a parent, something has broken down somewhere, but if we start punishing these parents who have "lost" their kids, then they will not come forwards to ask for help, they need to know support will be there, to help parent and for the child.

It's not an easy problem to solve as it's a breakdown in society that this happening for a multitude of reasons. Investment is key.

Do you know how many of these parents have asked for help? Because I know that there is parents that have actually begged for help for their children knowing exactly how it's going to play out.
But in most cases there is no help!
I have known parents to ask for SS to get involved and has either not reached there high criteria or do very little.
I had a friend with a 16 year old who kept leaving home at all hours (this young person was vulnerable) and she was not allowed to keep her in.

Yes parents of course can do there best to deter young people from going down a path of crime.
But from my knowledge it takes a community/professionals to stop antisocial crime which lead to more serious crime and then young people loosing their lives.

And the parents that deserve to get punishment (the ones who literally hand them this way of life on a plate) wouldn't give a shit if they did get punished.

I disagree with your idea OP, but it's fair enough to ask what can we suggest that would be a pracitcal solution to implement. The answer always comes down to money. Children and teenagers need dedicated space to hang out, exercise, play, learn etc. These need to be safe and well-maintained. Adventure parks with an adult supervisor on duty, skate parks, BMX tracks, libraries that are open more than 6 random hours a week. They also need to know that they have a future and choices. (There were lots of children my mother taught that grew up with parents in and out of jail, in areas where striving for anything better was looked down on. They just didn't see a future and didn't understand they could do anything different and ended up like their parents, or dead at a shockingly young age. She arranged for loads of things for her class to show them what was out there, she spent hours and hours of personal time trying to help them, but one person's will is not enough against an entire community unwilling to change. So we need more visits to school from inspiring people who talk about their job and lives and how they got started, we need school nurses and properly trained counsellors on site, we need healthy free school meals for all; every school needs to have a proper, well maintained and stocked library with a trained librarian; there need to be school excursions that show children what the world looks like outside their 1 mile home radius etc.) On top of child-specific strategies, parents need a real living wage, affordable accommodation and childcare for the young ones, so that they don't have to work multiple jobs and all hours in the day and, therefore, have the time and energy to take a more active interest in their teen's life. If they didn't see their parents working so hard and missing meals just to barely scrape by, some kids may be less interested in the cash offered via county lines type arrangements.

But if you're interested in this, get involved with the charities and police groups that are looking for and implementing solutions.

I agree, and was just about to say that parents can only do so much. Very easy to say 'dont let your ternagers [...]'. Kids arent robots, and they have minds of their own. Its not healthy for them to be rapunzel-like either.

I have no solution to suggest, but I'm trying to not be delusional or think my kids are angels

It may be a small part of a response to knife crime. But only a part.

Education has a bigger part to play in the reduction of knife crime. Education of teenagers and parents.

Encouraging parents and teenagers to talk to each other more.

Putting in support for more vulnerable families.

But it's not like guns that really only have one purpose. Guns that should be kept locked away and well out of the reach of the owners' children.

There are so many household items that can be weaponised that it would be hard to legislate and impractical to everything keep under lock and key. *

As a former teacher in an inner city school I only came upon knife crime once - when a large kitchen knife fell out of a pupil's bag. He had it for protection/as a threat to others who had threatened him out of school. He left the school that day. His parents knew nothing of this until they got a call from school.
Were they at fault? Not in my mind - but talking may have helped.

We put on speakers with anti knife themes. The ambulance service one was really hard hitting.

*Some fostering arrangements may require the foster parents to lock sharps away. Depends on the child.