10 years for carrying a knife

But OP is suggesting a blanket "caught carrying a knife, 10 year sentence". You can't have that and then allow police discretion for birthday cake carriers.

Although M&S might love that- a surge in sales of Colin the Caterpillar as all violent knife-wielding maniacs carry one around with them as a defence.

North Dakota recently reformed its prisons based on Norway's approach as has reduced their reoffending rates

North Dakota is one of the safest American states. I assure you, knife crime by youths is NOT an issue there, hardly any cities in fact. Really … nothing to guide the UK there

paedophobia?
Most young people I know do no carry knives with them. Last time I checked I had no phobia of young people but I prefer them knifeless, don't you?

Taking their entire youth for carrying something? It's not just something it's a weapon, one that is now increasingly, perhaps on a weekly basis used to kill innocent members of the public. It's the knife carrier's choice and their parents supervision and responsibility. By all means don't punish the young person, punish their parents, make them pay a large penalty feel, limit internet access, I'm sure there are some creative solutions 🤔

What on earth these young men would be like after ten years inside. I don't think they will magically turn into upstanding members of society. I'm not sure it matters much in our out in terms of what they would be like. but for those 10 years the public is safer.

There is no need to carry a knife in public. Birthday cakes can be cut with a normal butter knife, nothing sharp needed. Some people come up with the weirdest objections.

Whether that's not tackling male violence in their youth, too wide a gap between rich and poor, a lack of social mobility, a lack of care, a lack of jobs and training, shitty schools, mums struggling, no youth outreach, no fun stuff to do that's not dodgy. Whatever it is, it didn't come from nowhere.

Tell us, what fund stuff do knife carriers want to do instead of looking for trouble. At the end of the day it's their parents responsibility. Don't have kids if you feckless or have a feckless partner. Birth control is cheep or free.S Stop blaming society, blame their parents who raise such useless feckless brutes.

A girl (white) carried a knife into our school. She showed it to the other kids to intimidate and impress them. Naice middle class girl with support and hobbies galore. WTF is wrong with her? In her case it was due to what she had seen on the internet combined with a not very nice personality. Parents need to stop making excuses and raise their children to be law abiding citizens. I really feel sorry for teachers and all the law abiding good young people. There are some feral youngsters around, mostly raised by disengaged ineffective parents who let their kids online without supervision. Vile.

My post was too simplistic to be fair. Obviously if you do nothing else but reduce sentences it’s not going to reduce crime. Obviously looking people up and throwing away the key would reduce crime. However, we are never going to lock up anything but a very tiny proportion of criminals indefinitely so we need to think about how to prevent reoffending. Programs to rehabilitate prisoners and prevent reoffending do have some success. I think Norway are particularly successful. North Dakota recently reformed its prisons based on Norway's approach as has reduced their reoffending rates.

Yes lets treat an outlier like he's representative of the majority eh, that helps.

Do me a fucking favour, try reading and responding to what I actually wrote.

@ItsJustADream

There are reasons for having a knife. Chefs often bring knives with them, trades need knives for cutting , fishermen need knives, they are also invaluable in many ways eg camping, hiking, emergency car repairs.

What we need is clear guidelines on purchasing knives so they don't get into the hands of teens except for proper reasons. It may only be a Swiss Army knife, so not a long blade but it saved my camping trip last year, wouldn't want to be without it

Joanna Dennehy?

There are lots of reasons people might have a knife on them. Diving knives could do a lot of damage but are needed for underwater safety.

One thing that was working was education, but that is not cheap

There was a group that went into schools and explained what damage a knife can do, i.e. that sticking a knife in someone's bum might be a joke but could kill them.

As a society we should be funding the education around knives. It won't stop it all together in the same way we all know cigarettes are bad for us, it doesn't stop people smoking. We have cut the smoking rate through education, the gay community changed behaviour in response to education about HIV / AIDS.

benkinsella.org.uk/knife-crime-awareness-training/#:~:text=We%20deliver%20a%20wide%20range,suit%20your%20organisation%20or%20setting.

Are you sure about that? Violent and knife crime in Sweden for example is massively on the increase. Softly, softly just doesn't work. Prison is no deterent but at least the little fuckers are off the streets. They can shank each other in their cells rather than amongst decent folk.

Oh, FFS! Axel Rudakubana attacked a student at his former school with a hockey stick and upon arrest was found to also be carrying a knife. He was later found to be carrying a knife on a bus. He did not tell the police he was taking a birthday cake into work/going to a picnic in a park/a private chef on his way to a job. He told them he wanted to stab and kill somebody ........ and nothing was done. This despite his extensive, and by then documented, history of violence and disturbed behaviour. This isn't about the police racially profiling anybody. There couldn't be a more clear-cut case of carrying a knife with violent intent.

The police, politicians and community groups wang on about knife crime and teaching young people not to carry knives and now we found out if a violent offender is caught in possession of one he will be delivered home to mummy and told not to do it again. And then they act all shocked when the sadistic fucker goes out and murders people. It's just pathetic.

Again, if wood carving is your hobby, no doubt there would be evidence in your home to this effect.

There is a possibility for nuance.

I'm not sure what people want exactly with these arguments. I'm at a bit of a loss.

You want people to continue being stabbed?

Update your priors.

We have had criminal justice ‘reform’ in many cities that has let criminals out on bail with rap sheets a mile long.

We had fewer problems in the 90s and early 2000s when three strikes rule was in place (Bill Clinton was an amazing president for this)

America locks loads of people up and has very high levels of crime. The Scandinavian countries take a very different approach which seems to help reduce crime rates in general. I don’t know much about El Salvador but I can imagine the scale of the gang related crime issues provided the basis for very extreme action. In the context of what ‘locking people up more’ is realistically going to look like in this country (which probably won’t be much like El Salvador), evidence suggests it won’t work.

El Salvador begs to differ. Turns out when you lock violent people up, they cannot commit crime

Stop and frisk worked in America and it will work in Britain too.

But activists will hate it for reasons I’m sure you can work out

im general terms, locking more people up for longer doesn’t tend to reduce crime. I guess in this case it may have prevented this one horrific crime but we only know that in retrospect. That’s not a basis for policy making.

Yes I can see how the Southport stabber was afraid of those little girls

Do me a fucking favour

What do you think happens to people, particularly young people, in prisons?

Particularly young people who end up there for a silly mistake - like forgetting you have your work knife (lots and lots of reasons to carry a knife, at least two of my bags will have a knife in them I think, I carve wood, I also sharpen artist grade pencils with a scalpel easily sharp enough to kill with. When I worked on stable yards I always had a folding knife in my pocket, and I would absolutely go from yard to supermarket/round town before going home.)

Do you think they grow up, learn some useful skills and come out lovely people?

Or do you think they become more bitter, less well adjusted, and more distrusting of authority, more hatred toward authority and anyone they perceive as different to them... after spending years with only other criminals to associate with?

People carry knifes to do harm to others because of fear, on the whole. The solution is to get rid of that fear. How, I don't know. But thats the answer.

Prison is a very poor solution to a problem, it isn't a deterrent to those determined to commit crime, particularly hate crime. It isn't a deterrent for whom prison is a normal part of every day life. It is not a deterrent for people who believe wholeheartedly that their behaviour/actions are acceptable.

Play stupid games win stupid prizes.

Everyone must learn that regardless of colour sex creed or age

I'm fucking done with making excuses, if you're carrying a knife you're out to do harm, I couldn't give two shits the "trauma" that started that path and oh it's ok there there but as a country we need to fucking finish it. Jail.

@hehehesorry

No, sorry. A woman in my county got arrested for attempted murder last week for stabbing another woman in the street. According to reports, they didn't know each other, so there was either some altercation or it was a random attack.

Logic says that if you carry a knife, you're likely to use it should a situation arise. Even if you don't carry it with the intention to murder someone, if you happened to be walking down a dark alley with your birthday cake and knife and someone attacked you, damn right you'd use it. Which means you'd be another knife crime stat, and possibly done for murder.

The law is clear. We're not allowed to carry pepper spray or any offensive weapons in this country. Women don't get a free pass on fucking knives.

A lot of the arguments against this seem silly to me.

Plastic, disposable knives are fine for cutting cakes.

If we want to purchase knives it can be done online, delivered to our homes where we have to produce ID. (Some retailers already do this).

There really isn't any reason why it is necessary to be walking around with a knife and a few slight inconveniences would be completely worth it in my opinion.

MrsTerryPratchett

Who said anything about profiling?

I just said if someone is carrying a birthday cake (or a receipt) along with their knife then chances are they aren't out to kill children.

A bit of common sense wouldn't hurt here.

Spoken with huge dollops of middle class privilege there.

Tbf I don’t think QE11 actually carried the sword that she used to cut the cake 😂 - she had staff for that.