Plans to force knife-carrying youngsters to face victims of stabbings have been attacked as "piecemeal" and "ill-thought through" today.

Hours after two men were killed and a music festival-goer seriously injured in the latest wave of knife crime, the Home Secretary rejected calls for offenders to be given custodial sentences and instead suggested they visit hospitals to be confronted by people injured in attacks.

The measures, announced by Jacqui Smith, come as public concern mounts over a rising tide of violence on Britain's streets. Five people were killed within 24 hours at the end of last week, four of them in London, while the latest fatalities occured in Bristol and Bolton, one in a residential street and the other in a public house.

In Bristol, police launched a murder investigation and arrested two after a man believed to be in his forties suffered knife wounds to the head and chest in the Withywood area of the city. He was rushed to Frenchay Hospital in a critical condition and died this morning.

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In Bolton, a man was found injured at the Pepper Alley pub in Crown Street at around 12.50 this morning. Paul Gilligan was taken to the Royal Bolton Hospital with two stab wounds but was unable to survive. A 19-year-old has been arrested on suspicion of murder.

And at the T in the Park festival in Perthshire, a 22-year-old man was found by police with multiple stab wounds in the “yellow zone” of the Scottish festival’s campsite at around 12.40am.

He was treated by medics on the scene and taken by ambulance to Dundee’s Ninewells Hospital, where he was said to be in a serious but stable condition. The victim’s parents have been informed and police are looking for two men in connection with the attack.

Ms Smith's new shock tactics include visits to A&E wards where people are being treated for knife wounds, meetings with the families of stabbing victims, and prison visits to offenders jailed for knife offences.

However the Home Secretary rejected Conservative demands that anyone caught carrying a knife should expect to go to prison.

“It is simplistic and wrong to pretend that prison is an easy answer to all of society’s problems,” she said.

“The police, as well as judges and community leaders, don’t want every single young person found carrying a knife jailed, especially when we know that tough community sentences including community payback, supervision and electronically monitored curfews are more likely to stop them carrying knives in the future.”

Ms Smith disclosed that she had written to all 43 chief constables in England and Wales, reminding them of their powers to require pubs or clubs associated with knife or gun problems to search customers on entry.

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