10 years for carrying a knife

Ban men carrying knives. I doubt women carrying a legal blade has led to many murders but there's plenty of reason for women to have them these days.

I'm pretty sure the police are intelligent enough to weed out the innocent* middle class white women here!*

Corrected that for you. Because that's what everyone means at the end of the day. The police won't stop me, all white and bring. They'll stop young, Black men.

When I was young in South London, the white private school boys did more and harder drugs than my Black friends. But they were never, and I mean NEVER stopped. Which means the statistics said that it was the Black kids who were criminals.

What will happen is that the stupid kid who carries a knife because he's scared will be found, because he's a young Black man. And we can all merrily buy fancy Japanese knives and cut cakes and pretend it's fair or reasonable. While he's in prison.

Actually work with the causes. Properly, with money and time and skill and energy.

Oh, and if you just bought a knife you'd be able to produce a receipt. Again, not rocket science.

I think if you're carrying a birthday cake as well as a knife then you're probably not out to murder. You probably also only need a certain kind of knife for that (ie not with a pointy end).

I'm pretty sure the police are intelligent enough to weed out the innocent here!

Agree a mandatory sentence for carrying a knife. Why should our children pay the price for prison overcrowding? That problem clearly needs to be a priority.

Also deporting should absolutely be an option where offenders are not here legally.

Locking up mostly teenagers, mostly poor, mostly male, mostly living in difficult areas, a lot whom are Black. For ten years? Taking their entire youth for carrying something? And most of them are carrying them out of fear, stupidity or bravado, all of which are teenage diseases and they grow out of them quickly.

There's something called paedophobia, fear of young people. Instead of seeing that if young men are walking around with knives, we've failed them. 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.

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. But they could if they don't get locked up and many do.

I see why you're saying this but as you cannot criminalize all knives it can't work eg I could be jailed for carrying a birthday cake for someone into work along with some plates and a knife. I do this occasionally. Or, recently I bought a lovely Sabatier knife block and had to get it home. You can tell me these are completely different scenarios to carrying a knife with intent to harm (or for perceived self defense even) because of course common sense tells you they are exceptions, but common sense has never stopped stupid abuse of any draconian law.

There's no reason to have a knife outside of your home or workplace (e.g chef). If someone is caught with a knife, yes I believe it should be treated as though they are carrying a gun and they should receive prison time.

But with overcrowding I don't know how it would be enforced.

UK prisons are full to overflowing. There is an urgent need to sort out prison capacity before this kind of stuff gets considered.

We would also need to have a lot of stop and search stuff to make this remotely efficacious.