Teenage girls caught up in 'arms race' of young people carrying knives on streets

Carrying a knife has become "normalised" in parts of London with boys as young as 11 telling charity workers they take a blade with them for protection and do not expect to see their 18th birthday. Teenage girls, the youth workers add, are being drawn into this "madness" with more and more being asked to carry knives and guns for male friends on the pretext that they are less likely to be stopped and searched by the police.

These shocking revelations emerge from an investigation into what charities on the front line — funded by the Evening Standard Dispossessed Fund — are hearing and doing about the rise in knife crime, up by 33 per cent in the year to June.

Today's £1 million payout by the Dispossessed Fund, the fruits of our partnership with Comic Relief, went to 69 charities tackling inequality across London and included 10 that fight gangs, knife and gun crime. We spoke to six to get their views on the reasons for the rise in blade offences, what needs to be done, and what their organisation is doing to tackle it.

They deploy innovative responses, including knife awareness workshops, nail bars and old-fashioned on-theground youth work. The role played by social media in normalising and escalating knife crime is a recurring theme. The six are Abianda, Art Against Knives, Growing Against Violence, London Village Network, The PYE (Positive Youth Education) Project, and Superkidz. This is what they had to say.

What are the reasons for the rise in knife crime?

PYE: We work across London with perpetrators and victims and what is clear is that carrying knives has gone broader than gangs and has become embedded in wider youth culture. Large numbers of youths wake up every morning and automatically take a knife along with their mobile phone before heading out the door. The reasons are complex but are partly due to music videos and social media that glamorise violence and desensitize youths and make them think it is acceptable to carry knives.

Abianda: It's a catch-22 situation because the more people get stabbed, the more young people want to carry knives to protect themselves. Young people who are gang-affected tell us they do not feel safe and don't believe the police and youth services can keep them safe. We are seeing more young women being asked to carry knives and guns because they are not searched as much as men.

Growing Against Violence: Kids as young as 11 tell us they carry knives because they are scared of getting killed if they are caught "slipping" in the wrong area and that they don't expect to see their 18th birthday. Social media celebrates people doing knife crime and this perpetuates it and spreads it into wider youth culture.

London Village Network: Severe cuts in services due to austerity, especially in youth provision, together with the glamorising of violent crime on social media have led us into this dire situation.

Art Against Knives: We have seen a shift in youth culture with people getting caught up in violence at a younger age. Social media has a massive impact on the speed negative messages get out.

Superkidz: Drug-dealing turf wars have escalated which means that youths are frightened to encounter members of enemy drug gangs and the result is that young people are caught up in an arms race. What started with drug-dealing gangs is bleeding into wider youth culture, especially among socially excluded youths.

What needs to be done to tackle knife crime?

PYE: We need a range of responses, including for Government to take on the regulation of internet platforms and knife sales. We need music videos to carry a parental advisory warning and for sales of sharp knives — especially flick knives and zombie knives — to be tightly controlled and registered.

Abianda: We have to understand the barriers that stop vulnerable people accessing help from youth services, including the belief they will be used to snitch on their friends, and we have to remove those barriers and reach them.

Growing Against Violence: Teachers, social workers and the police need to be trained in social media to understand how the platforms operate and affect young people. The Met needs to proactively engage young people in schools to increase confidence in the police and introduce themselves as human beings.

London Village Network: Early intervention is critical but we cannot ignore young people already modelling knife culture — these are the peers that young ones seek to emulate. We need to change this mentality. The way to do this is by using former gang members who have transformed their lives.

Art Against Knives: We believe in intervening early, which these days means targeting children in high-risk areas in their final year of primary school. The transition to high school is a vulnerable time and prevention is key.

Superkidz: We need to fund and empower youth services to tackle the negative mindset that gives youths a distorted view of the world and fuels their anger. Young people with low selfesteem quickly feel belittled and lash out. Old-fashioned youth work works.

What is your organisation doing?

PYE: We'll use our £14,945 grant to run Double Edge, a knife crime prevention scheme for 45 at-risk young people aged 12 to 18, as well as workshops for parents worried their children have been caught up in knife crime. We work in partnership with schools, youth centres and local authorities. Our monitoring shows 92 per cent of youths we worked with stopped carrying knives.

Abianda: Our £20,000 grant will deliver one-to-one support to 25 gang-affected young women in Islington. The culture of our service is to shift the central question from "what is going wrong?" to "what caused you to survive?" We help them get clarity on what they want and agree a road map to get there.

Growing Against Violence: Our £15,000 grant will be used to deliver preventative education workshops focused on knives, stop-and-search and gangs to more than 2,500 students aged 11 to 14 in six secondary schools in Croydon.

London Village Network: Our £5,500 grant will be used to fund 10 "Stop the Knife" sessions for 150 young people on troubled estates across London. Our courses are given by an ex-offender who spent 21 years in prison for knife crime. We take young people from "street ready" to "job ready".

Art Against Knives: We operate two nail bars on deprived estates in Barnet where hard-to-reach young women come and have their nails done free by nail technicians who are trained youth workers. The nail bars provide a safe space to talk and get help with issues such as domestic violence or pressure to carry knives and we also offer training to become nail technicians. The Dispossessed grant of £19,697 has just been used to open a third nail bar in North Finchley.

Superkidz: Our £18,784 grant will be used to deliver mentoring sessions for 38 gang-affected young people on three estates in Greenwich. We focus on helping them resist gangs and drug dealers, enhancing their employability, and we tackle their ignorance about knife wounds and prison sentences. We tell them, "If you're a knifer, you can look forward to being a lifer."