We’ll never solve knife crime if we don’t understand it.

The news is full of reports on knife crime and politicians are busy searching for something to blame: Government cuts, not enough police, too many school exclusions – the list is endless.

But when will we face up to the real sickness in our nation: the way we have allowed the foundational building-block of our society – the family - to be undermined and broken down by our secular humanist, postmodernist, politically correct culture? And now we are proposing to brainwash a whole generation of schoolchildren with the same values.

I know that sounds like an emotional outburst – which it is! But I can give some pretty solid statistically-based facts to back it up. Let’s take a hard look at knife crime, which has overtaken Brexit as the number one talking point in the news this past week.

Violent Crime and Gang Warfare

The data shows that in the 12 months to December 2018, 1.7 million violent crimes were committed in England and Wales.¹ This was an increase from 1.2 million in 2016. Knife crime among young people has soared, with particular connections to drugs, gangs and territorial disputes.

Of course, knife crime is not new. Back in the early 1970s my wife and I and our three young children moved into the East End of London. On our first night, an 18-year-old boy was stabbed to death on the pavement outside our house. We trembled before God wondering if we had done right in bringing our children into this environment. Although I was no stranger to street violence after ten years in Tottenham, you never get used to the tragedy of young lives cut short and the sense of impotence and despair that surrounds it.

‘How we can stop the gangs in their tracks’ was the headline in The Times earlier this month² for a long article about knife crime, including quotes from the Home Secretary and senior police officers, and calls for more ‘Stop and Search’ and more work in schools warning children of the dangers. Only right at the end of the article was there a mention of ‘dysfunctional parenting’ and the suggestion that police officers should call upon these families to talk about the children.

Knife crime among young people is not new – but it has soared in recent years.

Underlying Causes

The Lords and Commons Family and Child Protection Group are preparing for a major conference on juvenile crime and family environment. A wide range of research studies show a complex variety of factors encourage young people into crime, such as low socio-economic status, harsh parenting, exclusion from school, availability of weapons, family disorganisation and abusive, violent home environments.

In regard to knife crime, research shows that girls are more likely to murder a family member, while boys are more likely to murder a stranger. Boys are more likely to use a firearm and girls to use knives or blunt weapons. Boys and girls equally use violence in conflict resolution, but girls are more likely to be involved in home-based family conflict, whereas boys are more likely to be involved in gang-related crimes.

Most media reports about knife crime focus on the socio-economic factor. In our equality-obsessed culture, it is often assumed that poverty and deprivation are the driving forces behind today’s soaring crime rate. However, this assertion is tempered when we compare serious crime figures today with those of a hundred years ago.

In the year 1910, the total prison population for England and Wales was 20,904 (today it is 82,543) and there were just over 3,000 prosecutions for serious crime.³ These statistics do not include figures for petty offences such as drunk and disorderly behaviour. Of course, the total population at 35,756,615 was only just over half of today’s population, but poverty levels were vastly higher than today,⁴ which really blows away the claim that socio-economic factors are the main cause of juvenile crime.

A century ago, crime rates were lower even though poverty levels were higher – blowing away the claim that socio-economic factors are the main driver of crime.

My own observations from living and working in inner-city areas of London for most of my working life are that the vast majority of children involved in crime come from disruptive families. This observation is backed by statistical studies, which show that the parents of juvenile murderers tend to have provided them with a model of violence. Both male and female young offenders are highly likely to have experienced severe abuse in their families and in up to a third of cases this includes sexual abuse.⁵

In other words, both boys and girls who grow up in violent families and who are themselves subjected to physical abuse are at risk of repeating that behaviour upon others - including other children, with girls more likely than boys to murder children younger than themselves.

Our Trouble is Self-inflicted

This brings me back to my emotional outburst at the beginning of this editorial. The simple truth is that we have brought all this trouble upon ourselves, by abandoning our Judeo-Christian heritage!

We have a whole generation of children and young people who have little or no knowledge of biblical truths about gender, sex and family life. Sadly, that also is true of many of our Members of Parliament, who are currently considering an ‘Education Bill’ designed to give ‘Relationships and Sex Education’ (RSE) to children as young as four in primary schools. The Bill not only forces all schools to teach LGBTQ+ values that undermine and destroy the marriage-based family, but also restricts the freedom of parents to withdraw their children.

What we are witnessing today is nothing less than state-sponsored social engineering! We fought the Second World War against the Nazi regime’s social engineering of public morality in Germany to promote their nationalist and racist ideology. But now we have a Parliament in Westminster debating a Government Bill to enforce acceptance of another form of social engineering: the promotion of homosexual lifestyles, transgenderism and the false notion that all forms of ‘family’ are equally good for children.

It is incredible that a Conservative Government whose philosophy is to preserve traditional values should be proposing a measure that will do such immense harm, undermining stable family life and putting children at risk.

Both boys and girls who grow up in violent families and who are themselves subjected to physical abuse are at risk of repeating that behaviour upon others.

It surely should be obvious that by weakening the traditional marriage-based family we have brought upon the nation all this knife crime, drugs, gang warfare, disruptive classroom behaviour, school exclusions, family breakdown, homelessness, mental health problems, depression, suicide and other social problems.

If we destroy the family, which is the linchpin of society, every part of national life is affected, because the family is the major agent in transmitting values and behavioural patterns to the next generation.

Faith AND Action!

In our recent editorials we have discerned glimpses of light and given a message of hope. Of course, there is always hope, but realistically the only way forward for the nation is repentance! And repentance does not simply mean saying sorry: it means a change of direction: turning away from false teaching and embracing truth, which changes our mindset and actions.

The only realistic hope lies with the faithful remnant of Bible-believing Christians who are still interceding before God for mercy upon Britain and the European Union. But prayer needs to be backed up and reinforced by firm action to declare the truth in all our conversations and at every opportunity – in our families and neighbourhoods, and with all our contacts.

In the words of Paul to the Christians in Thessaloniki, the nation needs to see “your work produced by faith, your labour prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess 1:3).

References

1 Violent crime is surging four times as fast outside London. The Times, 2 March 2019.

2 Sylvester, R. 2 March 2019.

3 First statistic from Ministry of Justice, quoted in ‘Prison and Courts Statistics, England and Wales’, House of Commons Briefing Paper Number CBP7892, 7 March 2017, p21. Second statistic from World Prison Brief. Third statistic from internal research for the Lords and Commons Family and Child Protection Group.

4 Though, of course, poverty is a relative concept and its measure over the years has changed.

5 See studies quoted on pp4-5 of ‘Trauma and Young Offenders: A Review of the Research and Practice Literature: Research Summary'. Beyond Youth Custody, 2016.