Mercy Muroki: Britain's knife crime epidemic is worse than America's gun problem

A new report by think tank Policy Exchange has revealed the true scale and causes of the knife crime epidemic that blights the nation’s capital. It confirms that the Metropolitan Police is, quote, "losing a battle against knife crime that is out of control in some part of London"

We have had the statistics on knife crime for a while, and yet so little of substance is done about it.

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, held a cross-party violent crime summit in July, but the man provides virtually nothing by way of real leadership, direction, or any real strategy to combat the menace. In fact, knife crime has risen under every year of Khan’s leadership.

It took a national lockdown to drive the figures down for the first time in his mayoralty last year. A damning piece in The Telegraph by Ben Obese-Jecty points out that over £50 million spent on schemes by the mayor to reduce violence has had virtually no impact.

The Knife Crime Strategy introduced by the Met Police in 2017 has not been updated, and has been dubbed "unusual and unjustified" by the experts who produced the report. I’m well acquainted with the knife crime statistics – but they remain nonetheless shocking.1,100 people were stabbed in London alone in the year up to the pandemic.

For comparison, that figure is more than the number of annual police shootings in the whole of America – and yet all the outrage by social justice activists seems to be about police brutality abroad. Yet they can’t garner the same level of outrage for the more deadly epidemic we face here at home. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.

Sadly, you can’t talk about knife crime without talking about racial disparity. Young black men are 24 times as likely to be murdered in the UK as a whole compared to their white peers – ethnic minorities make up over 80% of both victims and perpetrators of knife crime in the Capital.

It gets even more tragic – the average age of a perpetrator sits at around 20 – too many young people, often young black people, are starting adulthood by being groomed and enabled to be cold blooded killers. The report says what many politicians dare not – we are enabling the glamorisation of gang culture.

Big brands, social media companies, and music platforms are legitimising gang crime by allowing violence to be shared freely online and supporting those directly involved in knife crime.

All the evidence suggests Mayor Sadiq Khan is not the man for the job. Sadly, Khan’s poor leadership and the mediocrity of the Met in dealing of the issue will cost lives.And, those lives will most definitely be disproportionately lack.