Knife Crime Research Articles

TACKLING KNIFE CRIME–A JOINT VENTURE BETWEEN ED AND POLICE IN REDBRIDGE TO IDENTIFY PATTERNS OF ATTENDANCE OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE VICTIMS

Objectives & BackgroundRedbridge Tackling Knife Crime Programme was an initiative run between Redbridge Safer Communities Partnership, a London-based police force and Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospital Trust. It comprised...

A nurse clinician's approach to knife crime prevention

This article outlines a new and creative contribution to knife crime prevention by an emergency nurse clinician and an initial evaluation of its effectiveness. The 'knife crime prevention programme' is delivered to young people aged 11-16 years by one of the authors, Rob Jackson, an emergency nurse clinician at Liverpool University Hospital; the aim is to educate young people about the medical consequences of knife injury. A group of 140 students and 17 teachers responded to a questionnaire evaluating the effectiveness of the session delivered to four schools in Liverpool. Students and teachers positively rated the session, with the combination of the nurse clinician's knowledge and expertise and photographs and depictions of knife crime as a unique and impacting approach to knife crime prevention. It is suggested that the nurse clinician and other experienced health professionals have an important contribution to make in preventive approaches to knife crime. Further evaluation of the knife crime prevention programme will be conducted by the authors.

Open Drug Scenes and Drug-Related Public Nuisance: A Visual Rapid Assessment Research Study in Dublin, Ireland

The research was undertaken at a time of increasing public concerns for drug- and alcohol-related public nuisance in the city center of Dublin, Ireland. Rapid Assessment Research was conducted involving qualitative interviewing with drug service users; business, transport, community, voluntary, and statutory stakeholders (n = 61); and an environmental mapping exercise. The interplay between homelessness, loitering, an influx of drug users via city metro systems, transient open drug scenes, street drinking, drug injecting, intimidation, knife crime, and prescribed medication abuse was evident. Potential strategies to address drug and alcohol related public nuisance are advised to include the relocation of treatment services, targeted harm reduction initiatives, urban regeneration, improved community rehabilitation pathways, and heightened policing intensity.

Surgeons unite with police and charities to reduce knife crime

"Surgeons unite with police and charities to reduce knife crime." The Bulletin of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, 94(5), p. 151

Young Offenders as Trauma Health Care Providers? a Smart Idea

Rhys Jones and Anthony Walker. High profile murders of young people by young people. Both killed by violent penetrating trauma, both witnessed by young people vainly attempting to help. Having been shot on the streets of the UK, victims often have to wait in excess of twenty minutes before paramedics arrive, as police armed response units to escort them to the scene, delaying treatment. In 2007 a group of medical students and junior doctors set up an organisation, The Liverpool Project, to teach young people at high risk of being involved in penetrating trauma to be potential healthcare providers to deliver good quality basic haemorrhage control before the arrival of paramedics. With 14-15 years old being the peak age of assault perpetration, and hospital admissions as a result of knife crime increasing never has such training been so needed. It is also hoped that by providing these skills, it can potentially motivate the young person to provide treatment rather than seek immediate retribution and escalate the severity of a situation. The Liverpool Project has taught 300 at risk young people across Merseyside and it is know that two groups of young offenders have used our teaching with successful outcomes. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the young offenders find the teaching motivating and lifestyle changing.

Nurse clinician offers young people insight into the life-changing effects of knife crime

Nurse clinician offers young people insight into the life-changing effects of knife crime

Surgeons and police in Birmingham to work together to reduce knife crime

A conference held in Birmingham in September saw local surgeons and police officers come together for the first time in the city to discuss a joint initiative for reducing knife crime. Saving Lives: Reducing Violence will look at innovative practices, including educational workshops, information sharing and injury training, to try to reduce violence across the West Midlands. The conference, organised jointly by the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland (ASGBI) and West Midlands Police, heard how health professionals, police, youth agencies and other charities in the city could work collaboratively to help reduce the 4,600 hospital admissions that occur each year in England because of knife assaults. The initiative is already proving to be a success in London, where it was first piloted.

Medics speaking out against violence

Sue Learner speaks to a Scottish group of doctors who have left the confines of their hospitals to fight knife crime

Possession of a knife and private defence: Dilemmas in the pursuit of personal security in England and Wales

This is the second in a series of three papers about knife crime in England and Wales. It deals with the resort to self-protection generally and via the use of knives in particular, in the context of presumptions about protection afforded by agents of the state. The ‘uneasy synergy’ in the relationship between possession of a weapon and lawful private defence is examined, together with a discussion of the dilemmas raised by the pursuit of personal security.

Admissions following assault in children and young people

AimsWith frequent reports of knife and gun crime in the local area we aimed to determine the incidence of young people requiring admission to an inner city hospital following assault....

Getting the point across.

Nurse clinician in emergency medicine Rob Jackson is visiting secondary schools to warn teenagers about the dangers of knife crime. As part of his presentation, Mr Jackson shows youngsters pictures of knife injuries, hospital resuscitation rooms and mortuaries to teach them about the reality of violence.

Teenagers given graphic lesson in horrors of knife crime

Teenagers given graphic lesson in horrors of knife crime

Changing trends in the pattern and outcome of stab injuries at a North London hospital

Objective:To study the incidence, pattern and outcome of stab injuries attending a North London Teaching Hospital over a 3-year (2006-2008) period.Materials and Methods:A retrospective review of collected data from the Hospital database was conducted. The database contains comprehensive medical records for all patients attended by the trauma team for deliberate stab injuries. It is updated by the surgical team after each admission. All patients with deliberate penetrating injury who were attended by the service between 1 January 2006 and 31 December 2008 were identified. Patients who died in the prehospital phase, those managed exclusively by the emergency department and limb injuries without vascular compromise were excluded from the study.Results:Six hundred and nineteen patients with stab injuries (following knife crime) from North London attended the Hospital in the above period. One hundred and thirty-seven paients required surgical admission. Two were cases of self-inflicted knife injuries. Over the 3-year period the percentage of victims below 20 years of age is increasing. Ninety-three percent of knife crime occured between 6 pm and 6 am; recently moving toward week days from weekend period.Conclusions:The overall rate of penetrating injuries (stab injuries) is slowly declining. Timely cardiothoracic support facility is vital in saving lives with major cardiac stab injuries. Although alcohol drinking restriction has been lifted, most cases of stabbings are still occurring out-of-hours when surgical personnel are limited.

UK: the reality behind the ‘knife crime’ debate

This study of teenage violent crime in Britain in 2008, extracted from a longer briefing paper published by the Institute of Race Relations, aims to provide a description of who was killed, by whom and in what circumstances — a factual description which has been largely missing from much media and political evaluation.

Analysing youth gangs in Glasgow

Youth gangs remain a considerable police and public health challenge. Knife crime is a significant cause of premature mortality and morbidity in Glasgow. Examples of gang fighting in Glasgow can...

Teenagers under the knife: a decivilising process

The contradiction emerging between the lived experience of a minority of marginalised urban youth and the punitive operant conditioning of antisocial behaviour legislation is illustrative of the increasing gap between society's expectations of behaviour and the coming reality. In this paper, Loic Wacquant's sociology of advanced marginality is combined with Norbert Elias' concept of civilising and decivilising processes and applied to the dilemma of young offenders in a typical UK city. It identifies increasing educational exclusion and institutional abandonment in affected ‘neighbourhoods of relegation’. This process is part of a general trend towards the desocialisation of labour, which ushers in a reactionary, violent decivilising process among the minority most affected, where use of violence becomes the foundation of repute for otherwise powerless individuals, or for gangs in their control of small urban spaces. By analysing this dilemma from the perspective of the ‘perpetrators’ rather than the victims of knife crime, we seek to describe their praxis; that is, the nature of their habitus or consciousness.

Deaths from trauma in London—a single centre experience

IntroductionTrauma data collection by UK hospitals is non-mandatory and data regarding trauma mortality are deficient. Our aim was to provide a contemporary description of mortality in a maturing trauma-receiving hospital...

The role of the paramedic in health promotion

‘The role of the paramedic in health education’, is a subject area identified in the College of Paramedics Paramedic Curriculum Guidance and Competence Framework (College of Paramedics, 2007). There is no specific guidance on the content or context of this particular subject; therefore student paramedics and paramedic lecturers have interpreted this and linked it to health topics seen as relevant to young people. It is known that people can die for want of first-aid and that many people do not know how to perform first-aid. Two innovative 1-hour workshops have been designed for delivery to secondary school children in which the topic of emergency first-aid is linked with knife crime and drug and alcohol abuse. This article describes the rationale and design of the programme and reports on its initial feedback. It is a programme that shows great promise, but will require further evaluation before it can be rolled-out further.

RCN to issue policy on how to report serious knife crime to police

RCN to issue policy on how to report serious knife crime to police

There is a determination at all levels to reduce the gun and knife crime problem, not least among children and young people themselves

There can be no question that gun and knife crime is a serious problem – the number of young people who have been fatally stabbed or shot in the last few months attests to that. Of course, any such...