KNIFE crime policy was branded a shambles last night, after plans for blade-carrying youths to meet stab victims in Mersey casualty departments were ditched after just 24 hours.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith was left red-faced after insisting the “shock tactics” – designed to scare youngsters out of carrying knives – had been misunderstood.
The plan was announced for Mersey-side, Lancashire and six other “hotspot” knife crime areas, a key plank in today’s £100m Youth Crime Action Plan.
But they were quickly condemned, with one doctors’ leader arguing it was “tantamount to secondary victimisation of someone who has already suffered” to then be confronted by a knife offender.
Early yesterday afternoon – several hours after Gordon Brown, at his press conference, said the idea “was just one of the measures we are considering” – the Home Office issued a correction.
In the Commons, Mrs Smith insisted she had never suggested knife offenders should speak to victims during A&E visits, but that they talk to doctors about “gruesome injuries” knives can cause.
The Home Secretary insist-ed: “We are not, and I have never said we are, proposing to bring young people into wards to see patients.”
But a transcript of a TV interview on Sunday revealed Ms Smith apparently agreeing that her proposal was for knife offenders to meet stabbing victims in their hospital beds. The Home Secretary was asked: “One of those proposals is that people caught carrying knives should be taken to see people in hospital who have been stab-bed, or to meet the families of victims, is that correct?” She replied: “It is.”
Dominic Grieve, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: “This is yet another Government announcement that has been conjured up in three days and col-lapsed in three hours. Ministers should realise that gimmickry will not solve this very serious problem.”
The U-turn allegations undermined the Prime Minister’s attempts to finally get on the front foot over knife crime by pledging a package of proposals to ensure “prevention, enforcement and punishment”.
Mr Brown said today’s action plan would include more “Community Pay-back” sentences” for those caught car-rying a knife, which he said was a tough alternative to prison. Offenders would face up to 300 hours of unpaid work on Friday and Saturday nights, with tasks, such as cleaning graffiti and tending parks, decided by community panels.
Local councils will be urged to cons-ider curfews after 9pm for all under-16s. Mr Brown said yesterday: “Where there is trouble, this should be used.”
More than 110,000 “problem families” identified as having disruptive young-sters at risk of crime will be targeted, with greater use of parenting orders.
The worst 20,000 families will be threatened with eviction if they fail to deal with children barred from school, or have been in trouble with the law.
The Prime Minister defended the record on crime, insisting the number of offences was down by a third, but he admitted: “Too many people, young and old, do not feel safe in the streets, and sometimes even in their homes, as a result of the behaviour of a minority.”
