David Eyles’ thoughtful piece on the Platform today makes the obvious point that law-abiding people have plenty of legitimate reasons to carry knives some of the time, and highlights the dangers of reversing the burden of proof so that anyone who does so must prove their intentions were innocent.
I am inclined to go further and enter the head of a young person growing up on one of the many estates that exist in so many places in Britain where marriages don’t happen, fathers don’t raise their children and the welfare state pays far more bills than does work. It is easy to empathise with the Dorset farmer who needs a knife to do his job, but what about the teenager or twenty-something who grows up on such an estate? Much as he might cause middle aged hearts to skip a beat when he gets on the same tube carriage as they do, he is not especially tough or intimidating compared to his neighbours. Even if he is, what family he has may not be, and he worries about their safety whenever he hears about the latest mugging, burglary or stabbing. Even if he is confident of his ability to face-down the violence and intimidation that are a continuing part of his existence when it comes from a single person, he can hardly be sure of his ability to take on three or four inner city youths who take against him. Police are almost never seen on these streets, and if they ever do turn up to prosecute someone, the sentences are paltry.
As Nick Herbert noted on Sunday, “only 12% of those sentenced to prison have no previous convictions. Over half have five or more previous convictions, and over a third have ten or more. Those who say that prison should be reserved for serious or serial offenders tend to ignore the fact that it already is”. Rather than there being far more prison places than there are serious and serial offenders, as liberal intellectuals maintain, there are far, far more people who should be in prison than there are available prison places. Consequently, some areas of the country like that described above are continuously plagued by crime.
Is it really so irrational for people living in these Hobbesian parts of Britain to carry weapons and to club together for their own protection? Perhaps the simple logic of this scenario has never occurred to the many commentators who apparently think some inner city teenage boys carry knives for the same reason some teenage girls in Kensington and Chelsea carry designer handbags – to impress their friends. These pundits write of youths who form gangs and carry knives as if they are confident, arrogant and fearless, motivated largely by status. I don’t think this explanation for most gang-related violence corresponds even to everyday human psychology. The extremely assertive and outwardly aggressive person is the polar opposite of the confident, unafraid and relaxed human being. Hostile, aggressive and intimidating behaviour, expressed in this case in the form of carrying dangerous weapons and gazing with hatred at strangers, is the mark of a fearful, damaged person, constantly guarding against any possibility of being victimised. I am not sure that this fear is ill-founded – and if you are, try visiting some of the estates where crime is rife and see if you don’t then share their apprehension.
The point is not that anyone should defend or sympathise with the perpetrators of knife crime. Of course those who stab others should serve a decade or two in prison – as should incorrigible property offenders and almost all violent criminals. But it’s precisely because this doesn’t usually happen that many club together and carry knives. The way to stop youths carrying knives and joining gangs is an overwhelming crackdown on all crime. Hobbes himself would hardly be surprised to see that where authority neglects to protect its citizens, they decide that gangs at least promise some measure of security. That others make the same calculations and waves of violence follow is tragic - but to many of those closest to it, increasing carnage only underlines the need for such protection against violence as gangs offer, and so the vicious circle continues.
New laws aimed explicitly at combating knives may have marginal effects. But they do nothing to change the underlying logic that if the police are permanently buried in office paperwork and the courts cannot follow through anyway because politicians refuse to build prison places for feral thugs, then one is largely defenceless without a gang, a knife or both. The inescapable daily threats from others, real and imagined, will continue to loom far larger than the vague and far-off threat of a prison sentence if one is ever caught with a knife.
UPDATE: A sickening story from the Sun today illustrates much of the above. The perpetrator of a gang attack, in which thugs continued to stomp on the head of a man even after he fell unconscious in a pool of his own blood, was this week sentenced to just four years – meaning he will be paroled halfway through 2010. The young woman who rifled through his pockets to rob him will be out in nine months. The CCTV footage of the attack is on the Sun’s web site, though it is not for the feint-hearted.
