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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To be concerned over the increasing number of stabbings? [Edited by MNHQ at OP's request]

28 replies

Nicolaw06 · 03/03/2019 06:47

AIBU to be concerned over the increasing number of stabbings - especially the recent ones that look to be at random people?

I really think the government needs to bring the death penalty back as people just don’t seem to be worried about going to jail anymore (and with the death penalty not make it as painfree as possible. Why should they not have to suffer when their life is being ended when their victims would have been in immense pain). They painfully kill someone, go to jail, then come out a few years later to carry on with their lives. 😡😡

OP posts:
C0untDucku1a · 03/03/2019 06:48

Wow.

SuperHeroMum · 03/03/2019 07:01
Hmm It's a bit early for this....
redexpat · 03/03/2019 07:10

Or perhaps they could properly fund the police.

megletthesecond · 03/03/2019 07:13

And support the local teenagers who have few opportunities and support.

Twickerhun · 03/03/2019 07:15

Are you prone to jumping to extremes? Or just read the mail to often?

HK20 · 03/03/2019 07:20

YANBU to be concerned about random stabbings.

YABU to mention the death sentence.

Don't be so ignorant.
Also, the recent stabbings haven't been random as far as I'm concerned. Most people don't just think "oh I'll stab a stranger today".

Fiveredbricks · 03/03/2019 07:21

The latest girl was a girlscout. Who the fuck stabs a girlscout?! The only thing I can think of is the person who did it belongs in a mental facility or it was a gang initiation. Probably the latter. The Met neet to get a fucking grip on it and come down hard on the gangs as a whole and wipe them out (not physically, metaphorically). To do that they'd need a bloody police army. Also the shit music glorifying it in their scummy gang bubbles needs to be addressed properly. It's all cult behaviour and can probably be treated as such in a huge crackdown on the scum who do it.

0MrsP · 03/03/2019 07:21

And what if the wrong person is convicted... they're killed, painfully for something they were mistakenly charged for?
It's such a dated argument.. it couldn't be done these days.
I don't believe the stabbing are mostly random. There are reasons behind a lot of them you just never find out why.. not saying justifiable reasons, but something triggered it.

LaMarschallin · 03/03/2019 07:27

Only investigated this to see what "random standings" were.
Read the first sentence and thought, "That doesn't seem unreasonable".
Then read on and thought, "I didn't see that coming".
I'm such a newbie.

wombat1a · 03/03/2019 07:30

We have death penalty here, someone cut the head off a 4yr girl when she was with her grandmother. They got the death penalty, I don't see how it was a deterrent at all.

LostInShoebiz · 03/03/2019 07:31

I think we should also bring back transportation too, just for good measure. I think back to those early Victorian years when we had the death penalty and transportation and the streets were entirely crime free (except the Ripper, and Spring Heeled Jack, and the Bermondsey Horror, and Fanny Adams...

Correlation is not causation OP, just because you felt safer or it seems like there was less crime in the 50s or 60s or whatever, it wasn’t necessarily the case.

FamilyOfAliens · 03/03/2019 07:34

Go back to bed, OP, and come back when you have something intelligent to say.

Mummyoflittledragon · 03/03/2019 07:54

I take it you voted leave so we could reinstate the death penalty. Hmm

It isn’t a deterrent ffs. You only have to look at the US which has both actual life penalties, consecutive penalties (which can be decades, even over a century) and the death penalty to see this.

Namechangedforgoodreason · 03/03/2019 07:58

So your solution for a mainly black on black gang offence often committed by teenagers who carry knives as they are themselves terrified of being attacked is to kill them

Do some reading OP and come back when you have ever used some brain cells

Butchyrestingface · 03/03/2019 08:00

The latest girl was a girlscout. Who the fuck stabs a girlscout?!

She wasn’t in uniform at the time, was she? How would her attackers have known? I doubt it would have had much impact on their decision anyway.

Pinkiii · 03/03/2019 08:04

They just need to fund the police more and bring back stop and search without all the PC bullshit that everyone was up in arms about last time.

Secondly they need to make prison be an actual prison, not a holiday camp for the criminals.

janetforpresident · 03/03/2019 08:06

Firstly a lot of the stabbings are carried out by teenagers so even if there was a death penalty it probably wouldn't apply to them. It's proven not to be a deterrent and is an expensive form of punishment as almost all people on death row appeal repeatedly. It also requires someone willing to do the job of executioner which I think is too much to ask of someone. Lastly they will get it wrong sometimes and execute an innocent person.

That's even without going into arguments about the immorality and inhumanity of the whole idea.

Funkyfunkybeat12 · 03/03/2019 08:06

Death penalty is not a deterrent. Otherwise, there would be no crime in the countries that have it. It makes fuck all difference. Some of the defendants have been under 18, so you reckon we should execute children then?
There hasn't been a massive rise in stabbings in London compared to other years- the DM has just jumped on a theme and reported it to make people think that. Same as they want to make us think that young people drink obscene amounts and pass out in pools of vomit every Friday night/bank holiday and how immigrants are wiping out the English language.
The stabbing of the girl was tragic, but I would not be surprised if it comes out that she knew the attacker in some way- most of these attacks are related to gang violence. Obviously knowing the attacker in no way makes it better, but London is not turning into a no-go area as the press would like us to believe.

GnomeDePlume · 03/03/2019 08:12

All too often people the people who carry out these attacks are young, they havent got a sense of consequences. They dont see that stabbing someone, even if their victim survives, will have long term consequences.

All the perpetrator sees is the moment, the shock, fear, pain. Then they run away. They dont see the aftermath, the life saving treatment (if the victim survives), the months of treatment afterwards. The emotional damage to the victim, family and neighbourhood.

I would like to see more restorative justice. Even if the perpetrator goes to prison. To make them look at the damage they have caused and feel the guilt. Every day of their sentence to contain a reminder of what they have caused. A reminder that whatever boredom or restrictions they are having to cope with in prison, their victim and victim's family are suffering worse and that they were the cause of it.

JacquesHammer · 03/03/2019 08:12

YANBU to be concerned at the level of knife crime.

YABVU to consider the death penalty an effective or reasonable deterrent.

NameChanger22 · 03/03/2019 08:20

I completely disagree with the death penalty. I don't want to live in a country where the state has licence to kill it's citizens.

I think the recent stabbings are a sign of the times. Greed, inequality, poverty, deprivation, lack of hope - these are the things that need addressing in order to fix the problem. There is no quick fix. Society needs a huge overhaul.

Original poster
Nicolaw06 · 03/03/2019 08:32

But even an increase in police funding won’t help resolve the issue - police can’t be on every street 24/7 awaiting the next stabbing to happen to then try and stop it.....

These people know that ending someone’s life is wrong yet they still do it - so what would it take to stop them if not the realisation that they could lose their right to live too?

OP posts:
vintagebella · 03/03/2019 08:32

Local authority funding has been cut by an average of 30% over the last 8 years, youth funding has been decimated and police numbers are down 20%. Further education has been gutted too. Perhaps it's a perfect storm? The death penalty won't solve any of these things. I don't want to live in a society that has the death penalty as a deterrent.

SaturdayNext · 03/03/2019 08:33

Since when did the death penalty act as a realistic deterrent? Just look at the statistics in the US states that have it.

GenevievaJen · 03/03/2019 08:39

These people know that ending someone’s life is wrong yet they still do it - so what would it take to stop them if not the realisation that they could lose their right to live too?

Statistics show that it isn’t a deterrent - It just doesn’t work like that.

Take the UK - no death penalty. A murder rate of 1.2 per 100,000 people.

Now take Alabama - which has the death penalty - murder rate 8.3 per 100,000 people.

Mississippi - also has death penalty - murder rate = 8.2