Editing Material: (U7: P6)

Learning Outcome 4 (U7): Be able to write and edit a news article for an identified purpose

P6 (U7): Use sub-editing skills to finalise the article for publication

Injustices of Knife Crime

·      Knife crime in the UK is at an all-time high.

·      Drill music has come under heavy scrutiny.

·      The social divide has never been wider. 

Over the past 3 years, knife crime has sky-rocketed in the UK, causing a nationwide crisis. Many factors have led to this drastic rise in knife crime in the UK, with people placing a large amount of blame on drill music. 

But is this fair?

Drill music has long been seen as a scape goat for the recent spate of knife crime. 

In 2014/15, recorded knife crime was at 25,000, rising to 44,000 in the latest records. This is the largest number of recorded knife crimes in the UK on record. 

Where it cannot be denied that this has come about at the same time as a recent increase in the popularity of drill music, as well as some of the recorded knife crime being linked to drill, it has also come at a time where there has been a drastic increase of people living in poverty.

This creates the question: what’s a bigger cause of knife crime – drill music, or clear inequalities, especially for those part of the black community?

Jinx Prowse, who runs the Music Fusion youth project in Hampshire, said: “Gangs and their culture exist first. This then informs the music. Banning drill would be a naive and impotent response to addressing the real issues behind knife crime.” 

This viewpoint is gaining traction, with many people now recognising that knife crime has many, many underlying causes that have led to the recent upsurge in knife violence. 

Indeed, drill music has allowed people to escape from gang culture and build something for themselves. 

MK, an up-and-coming artist, stated: “Before I started something for myself in music, I was set on living on the streets, selling drugs to make ends meet, and then die on the streets” 

Drill music has allowed people who are most vulnerable and most likely to become involved in knife crime to escape from their pre-determined future, building a promising life for themselves. 

Arguably, the main reason for knife crime is the desperate living conditions in which a large number of young people find themselves living in the capital. The poor estates, and lack of opportunities, leave the youth with a very minimal number of role models; the people living on their estates, making all the money. 

They spend their lives looking up to these people, and aspire to be like them. This creates a problem, starting a chain of young people, brought up around these activities, and resulting in them only knowing one way of living. This merely perpetuates the problem. 

Young people who come from these poor estates are far more likely to be involved in knife crime, but not due to drill music; rather, due to the lack of opportunities and discrimination to which they are accustomed. A Guardian survey found that, in the last 5 years, 43% of those from a minority or ethnic background had been unjustly overlooked for a work promotion or new employment.

Seeing statistics like this, it makes it much clearer why so many young people find themselves in knife-related situations; facing innumerable hurdles when they attempt to break away from the situation into which they were born. 

Dollis Valley in North London is a place where deprivation and a lack of opportunities is extremely prevalent. Residents here only have the means for the necessaries, and a large majority even struggle with this. 

Living in a situation as difficult as this sends young people down the wrong path – the path of knife crime – as they feel like they have no other route. 

A resident at Dollis Valley said: “These conditions, and lack of opportunities provided by the local council, it’s no wonder that these young kids only see one way for themselves.”

Out of the 13.4 million recorded people in the UK, who are currently living in poverty, 34% of these are children. 34% of the most vulnerable are living in poverty, and being exposed to the harshness of life way too early. 

In a recent survey, 15 children aged 13-15 were interviewed on the subject of knife crime: 11 of them said they believed the way to leave their situation, and build something for themselves, was drill. This highlights the mindset of the young. Drill is not the enemy, but in many ways, the solution. 

If we, the UK people, were to put as much effort into helping these young people build a future for themselves as we do branding them the enemy, then maybe the number of lives lost due to knife crime would be significantly reduced.

Out of those 15 children we spoke to, 9 said they feel safer carrying a knife, than without. Out of those 9, all said they don’t want to carry one, nor would they use it unless felt threatened.

These children don’t want to be in this situation. But failure after failure after failure from people above them have left them trapped. Blaming knife crime on the popularity and expansion of drill is NOT to blame for the fluctuation of knife crime in the UK.

Young people face many deep-rooted situations and problems on a day-to-day basis. There are ways in which we can all help the underprivileged living at the peripheries of our society. 

Banning drill might seem to be the solution to some.

But this is only a short-term fix against a problem that threatens to boil over unless the real issues are addressed.