Knife crime is at the heart of The Ben Kinsella Trust’s story.
It was launched in 2008 after 16-year-old Ben was stabbed to death whilst on a night out with friends in Islington.
The charity has a simple tag line – “Enough is enough. Let’s stop knife crime.”
Tom Jewkes, operations manager and head of programmes, said that more than 15 years on into its mission, the trust remains “hopeful” that it will one day see a “society free of knife crime”.
Without hope he believes it will “fail”.
Tom said: “As we all know, knife crime is obviously a huge, systemic, societal problem which quite frankly has just been left to get out of control for at least the last decade.
“We see that reflected in the statistics but more importantly the impact that it’s having up and down the country and especially in big cities, urban areas like London.
“We often talk here at The Ben Kinsella Trust about knife crime being more like a vortex.
“It is pulling people into it and right in the centre you have those young people who very sadly are directly impacted by knife crime.
“Then the further you go out, we have people who are at risk or particularly vulnerable.
“On that outer circle you have the general population of younger people.”
For the trust, the key to teens being kept safe from fates like Ben’s lies in prevention.
By hosting immersive exhibitions and workshops, it aims to instead arm young people with the knowledge and education they need to understand what carrying a knife means for them and the wider community.
Part of this means tackling “myths and misconceptions” surrounding knives.
A recent report by the charity called Keeping Young People Safe saw 10,000 young people in London surveyed, revealing that 25 per cent of respondents believed carrying a knife would keep them safe.
Tom said: “We know that a very large proportion of young people who are carrying knives – which I should say is still a minority of young people – but of those young people, the vast majority and the number one reason we’re always given in our research is fear.
“There’s a big misconception when it comes to knife carrying, particularly around the idea that a knife will protect you.
“Unless you give them an opportunity to understand the issue, to ensure that they’re well informed and feel quite empowered about how they can keep themselves safe, then you have an endless queue of young people – a revolving door of young people – who are being pulled into serious youth violence and knife crime.”
A concern of the trust’s is the “alarmingly common” desensitisation of knife crime thanks to regular online content being consumed by young people.
“That content perpetuates all the myths that we’ve spoken about in relation to knife carrying,” Tom said.
“It massively amplifies the fear that young people feel and it over exaggerates the extent of the issue as well, so it’s not surprising that a young person that’s consuming that content, subject to those influences online, might think that ‘everybody is carrying a knife, and I need to carry one to keep myself safe’.
“All of those belief systems that young people have demonstrated in various different studies need the most powerful counter narrative and we need to be empowering young people, not scaring them.
“We need to be empowering them with skills, knowledge, facts, to make their own decisions to keep themselves safe.”
According to Tom, stopping knife crime and protecting London’s young people is a responsibility that should be shouldered by all of society.
“None of this is inevitable. We seem to have reached a place at the moment where we hear about knife crime on almost a daily basis and have become quite desensitised to it, and that includes adults and young people.
“We cannot sit by and accept this as normal or acceptable. No one is born carrying a knife – it’s a learnt behaviour and it’s something that can be prevented and we all have a part to play in that.”
The trust is now calling for “change at every level”.
Last year, the government announced an amnesty on zombie and machete-style knives that saw the opportunity for such weapons to be surrendered before possession of such items was outlawed.
Most recently, an amnesty on ninja swords saw them banned in full from August 1, meaning it will be illegal to possess such a weapon in public or private.
It comes as part of Labour’s manifesto intention to “aim to halve knife crime in a decade”.
Another concern of Tom’s is the influence of social media on young people.
“Unfortunately, there are a lot of harmful influences that young people have to try and navigate and they’re constant, they’re commonplace.
“Sadly issues around knife crime and serious youth violence, we hear time and time again from young people and have become normalised through those online spaces, particularly through social media – and in the worst cases even glamourised.
“We’ve seen lots of examples where current sort of sub-youth cultures are really heavily influenced by online content creators and they obviously have a responsibility along with the tech companies themselves, to regulate the material young people are seeing.
“Whilst there are some amazing things about social media, some really positive things about it, I think it’s also really important to remember that if you give a child a smartphone, then you are giving them access to the most powerful algorithms in the world.
“And those algorithms are not suitably designed to protect young people, particularly at risk or vulnerable young people.”
The Online Safety Act 2023 has seen a range of new duties placed on social media companies and search engines to better protect users, including young people.
Tom said: “We welcome the government’s commitment to halve knife crime in a decade.
“I think it’s a really positive step and obviously was one of their central manifesto pledges, and one of the really important things that manifesto pledge recognises is that you can’t solve this from April to March with one year of funding that tracks the financial year.
“That, I think, has been a constant problem in this space for many years now. We’ve had an entire generation’s worth of young people who have grown up in austerity with cuts to youth services, with cuts to policing – so, we need an entire generation’s worth of funding and support for those people to turn that around.”
