Knife offenders to meet stab victims

Jul 14 2008 David Bartlett, Liverpool Daily Post

MERSEYSIDE and Lancashire are two of eight "hotspot" areas across the country where youths caught with knives will be confronted with stabbing victims in a bid to deter the carrying of weapons.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced a number of shock tactics that will be used in a bid to curb knife crime.

Tactics include visits to A&E wards where people are being treated for knife wounds, meetings with the families of stabbing victims, and prison visits to offenders jailed for knife offences.

The measures follow last week’s spate of knife attacks which in London alone saw four people killed in the space of 24 hours.

Last weekend, two teenagers were stabbed in separate incidents in Merseyside, and last month figures released by the Government showed the region’s A&E departments were dealing with stab victims at a rate of nearly one a day.

However, the Home Secretary rejected Tory demands that anyone caught carrying a knife should expect to go to prison.

"I am very keen that we make people face up to the consequences. In my book, it is tougher than simply saying there is one, simple solution and that is everyone goes to prison," she said.

"The important message that we need to get over to young people is if you think you are safer going out on the streets carrying a knife you are wrong.

"You are likely to have that knife used against you, you could potentially end up using it against somebody else, your life will be ruined and the lives of others will be ruined as well."

Last night, the man charged with tackling the problem said knife attacks were becoming more vicious while both victims and assailants alike are getting younger.

Scotland Yard deputy assistant commissioner Alf Hitchcock said that, while once offenders and their victims were typically in their late teens or early 20s, now they were more likely to be in their mid or even early teens.

At the same time, he said police were seeing an "intensification in the severity" in the attacks being carried out.

Mr Hitchcock – who leads for the Association of Chief Police Officers on the issue – has been appointed by the Home Secretary to co- ordinate police efforts across the eight "hotspot" areas in England and Wales.

The opposition parties, however, dismissed the Government’s plans, saying they fell short of what was needed to match the scale of the problem.

Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve said: "While it is important to make offenders fully aware of the consequences of their actions, after 10 years the Government should realise that the public are sick and tired of ill- thought-through, piecemeal announcements and failed initiatives."

"SThey are not the answer - sending offenders to visit victims in hospital in is not anywhere near the same as sending them to prison."

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said: "Jacqui Smith is coming up with half-baked ideas because the Government has been in denial about the knife crime problem."

"Now she has been panicked into suggesting a plan that has already been tried and has failed in the United States, as the criminological evidence clearly shows."

The other "hotspots" are London, West Midlands, Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Essex and Thames Valley.