Scum-watch: Yet more on knife crime.
It's a brand new day, it's time for another brand new hysterical Sun leader on knife crime. First though, the Sun is urging every one of us to join in their aptly named "crusade" against knife crime by wearing a stylised "K" designed by Ben Kinsella himself. A noble venture, but as usual it's worth wondering whether the Sun would care so much or be pushing this so hard if Kinsella hadn't happened to have a semi-famous sister, or had been a colour other than white, as most of the victims of knife crime have been. It has been discussed here somewhat before, but it's taken the deaths of white "good" middle-class kids for the press to start shouting at the sky over street violence.The Sun leader is as always a classic of the genre, hilariously over-the-top while proposing a solution which is no better if not worse than any which a politician has championed:
STABBING someone again and again until they die is the purest form of evil.
It's a good thing we've decided on what the purest form of evil is. Maybe we can get down to agreeing what the less pure forms of evil are - leaving the toilet seat up, stealing candy from babies, etc. That this is the umpteenth campaign by the Sun to end the curse of knives and gangs doesn't seem to suggest to the hacks that it will do precisley nothing to stop the next jumped-up kid from sticking silver into the chest of another; or maybe it does, and they know full well that sales come from constant overreactions and scaremongering.
Our society is at a crossroads.
We are sliding rapidly into a Dark Age of lawlessness where human life has no worth and the only rule is the rule of a bloodstained knife.
That the number of murders has fallen recently, and that outside the major cities where there are undoubted serious problems life continues much as it has for decades doesn't seem to get in the way of the tabloid writer's reaching for the hyperbole. As a recent BBC in-depth look concluded, the number of knife offences overall has remained largely static over the last few years. What has changed is the age of those carrying them, with the age of those dying after knife attacks also falling. A couple of years ago the moral panic was about guns; while that is still a problem too, the subject has now changed to knives. In another couple of years it'll probably change again. The number one reason given for carrying weapons is insecurity, the sort of insecurity which the media itself has a hand in establishing. City and town centres at the weekend are lawless hellholes filled with binge drinkers; hoodies stand on every corner just waiting to do you over; every young person is potentially carrying a knife. If you get the impression that everyone your age is carrying a weapon, you might be inclined to as well.
This is why the Sun's proposed solution is so completely daft. Its coverage has helped to fuel a vicious circle, and now it proposes automatic jail sentences for everyone caught carrying a knife. It doesn't seem to matter that innocents and the scared will be caught up in this crackdown, those inspired to carry one for protection. While such behaviour can't be condoned, giving them a four year prison sentence, especially when you're below 16 for carrying a knife is the criminal justice policy of the madhouse. Four years' stay in a young offenders' instutition, alongside the genuine criminal fraternity and the other deeply troubled, mentally ill youth that make up the population is about the last thing that's likely to lead to someone deciding not to be so foolish again. It's the kind of thing that robs someone of their little remaining faith in society, embitters them and takes them out of the world at the precise time when they're maturing through social contact with those not just their age. Fines similarly are not the answer - hefty community service punishment, restorative justice sessions with those who have been victims of knife crime and help to get out of the gang culture if they're part of one is far more likely to have results.
The Sun however just wants the circle of going permanently in and out of the prison system to go on and on:
Those knives are out there because thugs have no fear of the consequences of carrying one.
The price of carrying a knife on the street HAS to be automatic jail.
Not a caution or a fine but JAIL.
That means we need to build more prisons.
Not next year or in five years but NOW.
We are looking at a catastrophic breakdown of law and order that threatens every family.
Of course, the crime statistics as we've noted time and time before say the opposite - it's just now that the serious problems which are still there beneath the surface have started to hit those who previously avoided them. Similarly, "thugs" don't carry knives because they know they can get away with it, they carry one because of either fear or status. It also doesn't matter that the Sun has consistently demanded new prisons without once providing an answer to where they're to be built, where the money to do so is to come from, or who's going to run them, it just wants them NOW.
His sister is haunted by the fact that the last faces Ben saw were the gloating brutes who murdered him.
That thought should haunt our politicians too.
Which again feeds into the idea that politicians can protect us from such crimes. They can't. All they can do is attempt to control it - and the controls which the the Sun wants are unlikely to help with that.
Labels: Ben Kinsella, feral kids will kill us all, knife crime, overreacting, scaremongering, Scum-watch, Sun-watch, tabloid mendacity
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