Background Information:

Bullying and beyond
Recent research has shown that bullying is a major concern among young people, and that in some communities they have to be prepared to deal with more serious incidents involving weapons, particularly knives, with large inner city estates presenting a particular problem.

To school and back
Bullying is often associated with school, but increasingly the journey to and from school is becoming hazardous. The NSPCC report 'Children, Young People and Community Safety' argues the full scale of violence encountered by young people is not known. It is generally thought to be underestimated because the statistics available are unreliable.

Speculation and reality
Care needs to be taken when speculating about levels of violence among young people without any hard reliable evidence to back up conclusions. National averages can be misleading because they underestimate pockets of extreme violence around the country. Under-reporting of crime among this age group further blurs the picture. Statistics taken out of context and used in sensational media reports also skew the picture, contributing to negative impressions of young people in society at large. There is therefore a need for good research and statistics before judgements can be made about levels of violence in any one area and appropriate responses devised.

Young fear
Research findings continually suggest that young people as a group are most feared by people of all ages in our society, yet they are the group most often victimised and the group least likely to report crime or be taken seriously.

Blade availability
Concern about violent crime in Britain has swung back to knives and how readily available they are to children and young people. A recent Trading Standards Institute report found almost half the shops tested in their sample broke the law by selling knives to young people under the age of 16. The situation has been made worse in recent years because knives can be purchased with relative anonymity over the internet.

Rising knife culture?
It is often asked whether we are really witnessing a rise in so-called knife culture or whether recent coverage of the issue in newspapers is mere hysteria. According to the Home Office, the number of people convicted of carrying a blade in public was 2559 in 1991 and 3570 in the year 2000. There are those who see the increase in convictions in terms of the success of crackdown operations and not in terms of a higher incidence of knife carrying. Meanwhile A & E departments in hospitals in parts of the country report they are seeing an increase in stab wounds which are not reported to the police. The Youth Justice Board recently found that carrying a knife was the most common offence among young people excluded from school and identified availability and ease of use as a problem. The situation is further confused by inconsistencies relating to government 'lock up' and 'rehab' policies and media reporting of the same.