Hardly a day passed over the Bank Holiday without a violent incident involving young people. No wonder there is concern about youth crime. Five key pieces of legislation and an estimated £2.9 billion have been spent on trying to curb youth crime.

It is worth remembering that it is only a small number who are involved in serious crime. And the clustering of many fatal knife attacks in London has fuelled disproportionate media coverage.

Alf Hitchcock, deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said: “Statistically, knife crime remains a rare event. However, there are two trends that have been observed over the last few years: the severity of injuries has become more serious, and the age of offenders and victims has decreased from mid-teens to early twenties, to early to mid-teens.”

Carrying a knife is the most common form of knife-related offending. A Home Office survey of 5,000 people aged 10-25 in 2005 found that 4 per cent had carried a knife in the previous 12 months. The maximum sentence for the crime has been increased from two to four years, but the Government has resisted pressure for a mandatory minimum term.

There has also been been an overall surge in offences of violence against the person committed by 10 to 17 year-olds. While overall offending by youngsters has remained broadly stable since 2002, out of about 300,000 offences committed by young people, 56,200 were violent attacks on others – up from 40,000 four years ago.

Overcoming violent youth crime will require more than simply places in youth jails. It will require intervention with families and schools because often these youngsters have never been given boundaries, never been taught how to behave and have never had a role model to explain things to them. The work does not fit in with the politicans’ usual timeframe of the next general election, but everyone working in youth justice recognises there is no quick fix.

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