Respect at the cutting edge

The media is full of the debate about knife crime. The London Evening Standard billboards are proclaiming almost daily about the latest murder and the almost inconceivable statistics about the amount of knife crime and related assaults that are occurring daily, weekly and annually.

Scaling back prosecutions

At the same time the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) announced '“ to some criticism '“ what appears to be a scaling back in prosecutions, looking to more civil (or uncivil) remedies to slow down the fraudster and get everybody's money back. Is there a sense of less is more?

As for the SFO, there does appear to be a point. If we go after the fraudsters criminally we seem to get sucked into long-running trials that cost a fortune, have zero guarantee of success given the vagaries of the law and the trial process, and result '“ if we are lucky '“ in pretty pitiful sentences at the end of it. After that there remains the confiscation and enforcement process.

On the other hand, a civil approach has the interesting concept of the lack of public funding: so suddenly, facing a lower standard of proof and a single judge rather than a jury, the alleged fraudster is funding his own defence (very expensive), is more likely to lose, and if he does, will be liable for the prosecution's costs '“ oh, as well as a hefty sum in damages.

Chuck in some adverse publicity and black listing from any sort of reputable job, and the alleged fraudster certainly might do a deal pretty quickly. It is a rough sort of justice but it might be highly effective in the right sort of case. For a long time now the Inland Revenue (as it used to be called) have had a halfway house system for less high value and less blatant forms of revenue contraventions, such that settlements can be reached.

Knives are not a new phenomenon

What about knives? First of all we should remember that there is nothing totally new about knife crime among young people. At least a generation ago criminologists were reporting on the activities of youth gangs in Glasgow, where the knife was the weapon used not infrequently. The phrase 'Are you carryin'?' went straight to the issue and we all know about 'the Glasgow kiss'.

Graham Greene wrote about knife crime in Brighton Rock. What is terrifying now is that it has become endemic.

The scary thing now is the frequency of the attacks. On the Today programme recently two young men were interviewed about knife crime '“ and they blew the gaff on the whole thing; depressing listening it was too.

Essentially a knife is carried for self-defence against other knives, and is used often as a means of re-asserting the 'respect' considered to have been slighted in what might reasonably seem to have been a trivial and harmless way (stepping on somebody's toe at a party).

When the knife is used nobody is thinking about the consequences, and everybody is accepting the possibility of a lengthy custodial sentence as an occupational hazard that does not deter possession in the first place.

Intoxication and safety

The problem then is cultural. In the same way the youth gangs of Glasgow 30 years had a culture of 'carryin'', so now does a large section of the young people of Britain today. What needs to be unpicked then are issues to do with respect, aggression, intoxication and safety. It might help if knives were difficult to buy '“ so no more bizarre shops where unnecessarily frightening knives are sold for no good reason (find another less weird hobby, all you collectors); it should help if cheap alcohol was nearly impossible to buy '“ so for example the draconian step is taken of only selling alcohol from supermarkets of a certain size and off-licences (harder places for children legitimately to be).

This would mean no cornershop sales '“ hard for the shops but it might cut down on the drinking. There should be no 'happy hours', no 'alcopop'-type drinks, and maybe no advertising. There should be higher taxes. There is a need for long deterrent sentences and a need for knife detectors in schools, clubs and pubs, and more police on the beat and more stop and search. But above all the 'respect' issue has to be addressed.

It is one of the great ironies that the use of the word 'respect' in this context means, in fact, no respect for anybody else. So we have to go back into schools, families and communities and somehow re-educate or prevent young people developing this mutated concept of 'respect'. To really achieve that, somehow we need to get on side the very people who have redefined 'respect'. That is the real challenge '“ to get the people who 'carry' not just to disarm, but to set an example.

Is there a really constructive way of prosecuting or using sentencing to do this? Now that would be an amazingly brave initiative '“ but it might be our only hope. But now that the SFO have thought the unthinkable, might we be able to do it again?