How can we tackle knife crime and yob culture?
Network Norwich columnist James Knight discusses knife crime, yob culture and teenage breakdown. We are in the middle of my Visions of New Beginnings series, but I want to break off from that for a week to talk about a subject which is dominating many of the news headlines at present – the problem of Youth Crime – ranging from the less serious crimes (antisocial behaviour, vandalism) through to more serious crimes (knife and gun crimes – often resulting in murder). Although the individual crimes are isolated incidents, they are also the concatenation of crisis conditions – conditions that are having, and have had for some time now, a very negative effect on young people in this country – many of whom are stuck in a life of persistent crime. I think, and have thought for some time, that to confer upon a person the term ‘recidivist’ (a persistent re-offender, even after punishment) is not conducive to helping the person so accused. When we talk idly of a person ‘relapsing’ back into crim
