LONDON—A young man dressed in jogging pants and a hooded sweatshirt bent over to lay a flower on a street tribute where his school friend was fatally stabbed just days earlier. The 17-year-old said that he wasn’t with Ben Hitchcock on the night that he was set upon by a rival gang, wielding bats and knives, but wished he was. “Maybe things would have been different,” he said.
The murder, which took place back in June 2007, was one of the first that I had been asked to cover as a rookie reporter for a small weekly paper. It made huge headlines in the local press, with some warning of a teenage gang war that would be waged in the leafy suburbs of South London.
But nationally, Ben’s death was just a statistic—a part of a growing trend in teenage gang violence that indicated that something was seriously wrong with Britain’s youth. At the time, newspapers compiled murals of murdered teenagers. And, police chiefs across the country announced tough new measures to tackle teenage knife crime.
Their efforts seem to have paid off. Figures in 2009 show a 30 percent reduction in the number of stabbings in the UK. However, many claim that the statistics are “unsubstantiated.” According to data from the Metropolitan Police, there are 171 violent teen gangs, at least three of which are all-girl, in London alone. In 2004, a British Crime Survey found that 60,000 11-to-16-year-old teens carried knives habitually. Many said that the purpose was to look “cool” and “tooled up.”
“There are kids out there for whom slipping a knife into their pocket before they go out is as natural as pulling on a pair of trainers,” said Norman Brennan, head of the charity Knives Destroy Lives, in an interview in 2007, “Knife crime is out of control.”
Loitering teenagers, wearing “hoodies” and baseball caps, are now persona non grata in public areas across the country. Local authorities can slap teenagers with Anti Social Behavior Orders, or “Asbos,” forbidding them from entering town centers.
Mosquito devices installed outside of shops across the country, emit an annoying high pitched noise that is only audible to teenagers, in order to deter them from hanging around outside. However, some claim that Britain’s war on teenagers has gone too far.
In 2006, Professor Rod Morgan, chairman of the Youth Justice Board released a report claiming that Britain’s youth was at risk of being “demonized,” particularly by being given Asbos. “There are adverse consequences of fixing a mark of Cain to a child’s forehead,” he told the Independent on Sunday, at the time, “The argument is that if you give a dog a bad name then the dog may live up to the name.”
Between their introduction in 1999 and December 2007, there were 14,972 Asbos issued across the country. Politicians believe however that the breakdown in family values is behind the phenomenon which has become known as “Broken Britain.”
A recent analysis of 4,000 offenders by the Youth Justice Board found that 70 per cent were from broken families. Indeed, just last week Britain was gripped with the story of how two brothers, then aged 10 and 11, lured two boys, aged 9 and 11, away from a park in the village and into nearby woods where they were strangled, hit with bricks, stripped and forced to sexually abuse each other, in a 90-minute ordeal.
The parents of the brothers, who received indefinite sentences last week at Sheffield Crown Court, could now face charges after details of the “toxic home life” they had given their children were revealed.
The case was seized upon by the Conservative Party—who are widely tipped to gain office in this summer’s general election—as an example of ‘Broken Britain’, and the desperate need for reform.
Whatever the solution, there is a clear perception that something needs to be done.
Martin Innes, professor of the Police Science Institute at Cardiff University, said in a recent interview that this was of particular urgency, “We are approaching a point where we can either come back from the brink, or we’re sailing over the abyss,” he said.
The murder, which took place back in June 2007, was one of the first that I had been asked to cover as a rookie reporter for a small weekly paper. It made huge headlines in the local press, with some warning of a teenage gang war that would be waged in the leafy suburbs of South London.
But nationally, Ben’s death was just a statistic—a part of a growing trend in teenage gang violence that indicated that something was seriously wrong with Britain’s youth. At the time, newspapers compiled murals of murdered teenagers. And, police chiefs across the country announced tough new measures to tackle teenage knife crime.
Their efforts seem to have paid off. Figures in 2009 show a 30 percent reduction in the number of stabbings in the UK. However, many claim that the statistics are “unsubstantiated.” According to data from the Metropolitan Police, there are 171 violent teen gangs, at least three of which are all-girl, in London alone. In 2004, a British Crime Survey found that 60,000 11-to-16-year-old teens carried knives habitually. Many said that the purpose was to look “cool” and “tooled up.”
“There are kids out there for whom slipping a knife into their pocket before they go out is as natural as pulling on a pair of trainers,” said Norman Brennan, head of the charity Knives Destroy Lives, in an interview in 2007, “Knife crime is out of control.”
Loitering teenagers, wearing “hoodies” and baseball caps, are now persona non grata in public areas across the country. Local authorities can slap teenagers with Anti Social Behavior Orders, or “Asbos,” forbidding them from entering town centers.
Mosquito devices installed outside of shops across the country, emit an annoying high pitched noise that is only audible to teenagers, in order to deter them from hanging around outside. However, some claim that Britain’s war on teenagers has gone too far.
In 2006, Professor Rod Morgan, chairman of the Youth Justice Board released a report claiming that Britain’s youth was at risk of being “demonized,” particularly by being given Asbos. “There are adverse consequences of fixing a mark of Cain to a child’s forehead,” he told the Independent on Sunday, at the time, “The argument is that if you give a dog a bad name then the dog may live up to the name.”
Between their introduction in 1999 and December 2007, there were 14,972 Asbos issued across the country. Politicians believe however that the breakdown in family values is behind the phenomenon which has become known as “Broken Britain.”
A recent analysis of 4,000 offenders by the Youth Justice Board found that 70 per cent were from broken families. Indeed, just last week Britain was gripped with the story of how two brothers, then aged 10 and 11, lured two boys, aged 9 and 11, away from a park in the village and into nearby woods where they were strangled, hit with bricks, stripped and forced to sexually abuse each other, in a 90-minute ordeal.
The parents of the brothers, who received indefinite sentences last week at Sheffield Crown Court, could now face charges after details of the “toxic home life” they had given their children were revealed.
The case was seized upon by the Conservative Party—who are widely tipped to gain office in this summer’s general election—as an example of ‘Broken Britain’, and the desperate need for reform.
Whatever the solution, there is a clear perception that something needs to be done.
Martin Innes, professor of the Police Science Institute at Cardiff University, said in a recent interview that this was of particular urgency, “We are approaching a point where we can either come back from the brink, or we’re sailing over the abyss,” he said.
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