Empty pledges won’t solve the knife crime epidemic

On 23 September last year at 6.30 p.m. in the evening in a street in Woolwich, London, Daejaun Campbell cried out, ‘I’m 15, don’t let me die’ as he bled out on a pavement after being stabbed. You probably won’t remember Deajaun but he was a one of nine children murdered by knives in London last year. He was a young black man in a city where victims and perpetrators often share the same ethnicity. An investigation by the Times has revealed that over half the 576 black people murdered by knives between 2013 and 2023 were aged between 16 and 24. London bucks a national trend that reports knife crime in line with demographics – predominantly committed by white people aged in their 30s. In our capital the majority of offenders sentenced for knife offences are aged 18-20. Over half of them were black.

State officials often reacts with squirming obfuscation when confronted with data which suggests we have a problem with black teenagers murdering each other at rates out of proportion with their community representation.