2010 election & changes to knife law

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Trunks

Full Member
May 31, 2008
1,716
10
Haworth
Usual caveat to mods, if this thread turns knife rant, please end it. But i was just wondering if those "in the know" could shed some light?


I have just watched the daily politics election debate (23:30 see iplayer 20.04.10)

Three reps, one from each party were talking about how they would "fix" Britain. Inevitably they started talking about knife law.

These were their party positions:

Conservative (party manifesto 2010-04-20 Page 56)

"We have to send a serious, unambiguous message that carrying a knife is totally unacceptable, so we will make it clear that anyone convicted
of a knife crime can expect to face a prison sentence"

Labour (manifesto p40)

"We have strengthened the law on knife crime with jail more likely, sentences longer, and more police searches and scanners – and knife crime has fallen.

Liberals (manifesto p73)

"Make hospitals share non-confidential information with the police
so they know where gun and knife crime is happening and can target
stop-and-search in gun and knife crime hot spots."

Although i have my own political views, i'm not wanting to "convert" anyone. I just want to know the facts about what i am voting for before ticking the ballot.

Cheers
 

Minotaur

Native
Apr 27, 2005
1,600
232
Birmingham
Still in disbelief over the dagger carrier getting 150 or so hours service.

Going to be very interesting to see what happens this time.
 

Hangman

Tenderfoot
I have problems taking any of them seriously, at best they are empty words playing to the public or a knee jerk, ill informed, ill targeted response:

Conservative (party manifesto 2010-04-20 Page 56)

"We have to send a serious, unambiguous message that carrying a knife is totally unacceptable, so we will make it clear that anyone convicted of a knife crime can expect to face a prison sentence"

- Talking tough, or does this hint at a ban on ALL knives, or at least a nod to the police and magistrates to concentrate on knife crime and hand out tougher sentances even to 'legitimate' knife users at the expense of other crime?


Labour (manifesto p40)

"We have strengthened the law on knife crime with jail more likely, sentences longer, and more police searches and scanners – and knife crime has fallen.

- According to A&E figures no it hasn't (but let's face it labour tried this trick with speed cameras by altering the KSI classifications and again the 'revamped' figures were grossly out of kilt with A&E admissions from RTC's).

Also, just prior to the consultation to the VCR Act the Metropolitan Police Force had just finished a study into knife crime in London with additional information from other forces around the UK.

Amongst the findings was the little titbit that 85% of all knife crime involved knives that had been stolen from high street shops or were stolen from home (It doesn't say but I'm assuming that it means from parents), another 5-10% were knives bought from high street shops.

The other 10-15% were the so called 'Rambo' or 'Commando' / military knives and 'manufactured' knives (I'm assuming home-made knives, shanks etc).

Yet the report was only released to the public for a few months late last year. The worrying thing is that after the press release I'm still trying to obtain a full copy of this report and its proving damm hard to find - a case of burying bad or embarrassing news?

If the study is correct then normal ‘everyday’ household knives are a real problem. Obviously they cannot be banned, BUT, the way they are sold could very well be changed, and quite easily. Yet there was very little in the VCRA that made the necessary changes. The idea that locking blade knives would be treated 'in a common sense manner and on a case by case basis' just hasn't held water.


Liberals (manifesto p73)

"Make hospitals share non-confidential information with the police so they know where gun and knife crime is happening and can target stop-and-search in gun and knife crime hot spots."

- Sounds the most reasonable and substantive comment of the three to me, however, A&E admissions are recorded and the data is accessable by the police / CPS etc (as it is with RTC's as the shambles re speed cameras shows), are they saying that like in the US (IIRC) injuries from knife crimes should be reported at the time of treatment or certainly with 24 hrs of A&E attendance? Would be a move towards more immediate 'intelligence'.


For me one thing that all the parties are missing is the way 'everyday' knives are sold and how easy it is to buy or steal an everyday knife for use in crime, if we are to believe the Met report these 'everyday' knives are far more of a problem than the 'exotica'.

My idea on knife control (of the 'everyday' kind) is thus: Why not make any shop that sells knives – especially kitchen knives hold them in a display case with a tag that they have to take to the checkout / customer services where age can be verified and of course the items are away from anyone who wishes to steal them?

We already have a precedent for this type of controlled sale with high value items and of course with solvents – in the late 80’s and early 90’s we had a big problem with underage solvent abuse, the most dangerous solvents were required, by law to be sold in smaller quantities and in the manner I have already described above, funnily enough it had a huge impact on under age solvent abuse.

If one of the parties were to talk about implementing that sort of scheme I'd be very interested in voting for them, but I suspect that the above statments are all hot air and will amount to little except further restrictions on the law abiding.
 

tobes01

Full Member
May 4, 2009
1,901
45
Hampshire
My biggest worry is the almost inevitable shift to mandatory sentencing, as with illegal possession of firearms - a court will be unable to take into account the fact that you clearly aren't a young hoodie, and just happened to be taking your precious SWC round to a friend's house for an evening's whittling, and have to slap you with a 3-year sentence regardless.

The age control argument is a really dangerous route, all it's doing is shifting the burden of responsibility back to the retailer. Government simply needs to provide more prescriptive guidelines on what merits 'carrying' (e.g. in the bottom of your rucksack doesn't count), what's a 'public place' (e.g. out in the woods isn't) and resolve the confusion over sentencing so that pensioners don't get a criminal record for peeling an apple in public.
 

Laurentius

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Aug 13, 2009
2,422
614
Knowhere
Well the real problem is concentrating on the implement and not the type of person most likely to commit a crime with it.

Whilst there may be some violent pensioners out there, I would expect that by that age they would already be well known to the police after a life time of trouble.

The biggest risk of a miscarriage of justice I think comes to the young responsible knife user who gets caught out because they look wrong.
 

HillBill

Bushcrafter through and through
Oct 1, 2008
8,141
88
W. Yorkshire
My biggest worry is the almost inevitable shift to mandatory sentencing, as with illegal possession of firearms - a court will be unable to take into account the fact that you clearly aren't a young hoodie, and just happened to be taking your precious SWC round to a friend's house for an evening's whittling, and have to slap you with a 3-year sentence regardless.

The age control argument is a really dangerous route, all it's doing is shifting the burden of responsibility back to the retailer. Government simply needs to provide more prescriptive guidelines on what merits 'carrying' (e.g. in the bottom of your rucksack doesn't count), what's a 'public place' (e.g. out in the woods isn't) and resolve the confusion over sentencing so that pensioners don't get a criminal record for peeling an apple in public.

I do not believe that will be the case. Gun laws are different, possession of a firearm without license is mandatory 5 years, as guns are only accessible to folk the government say are trustworthy. Guns are designed for one thing only, as a means to kill. Yes they can be used for target shooting, but thats not what they were designed for.

Knives are everyday legal items for everyone, they are designed to cut. No sentence mandatory due to this.
Knife crime (violent) should carry the same sentence as gun crime IMO. As should any violent crime with a weapon.

Any other crimes involving knives (non violent) should be left to a judge to decide depending on the situation ( this would be rare)

Legal knife use, don't even worry. All the parties say they will toughen up on knife "crime", Good i hope they do
 

BorderReiver

Full Member
Mar 31, 2004
2,693
16
Norfolk U.K.
I do not believe that will be the case. Gun laws are different, possession of a firearm without license is mandatory 5 years, as guns are only accessible to folk the government say are trustworthy. Guns are designed for one thing only, as a means to kill. Yes they can be used for target shooting, but thats not what they were designed for.

Knives are everyday legal items for everyone, they are designed to cut. No sentence mandatory due to this.
Knife crime (violent) should carry the same sentence as gun crime IMO. As should any violent crime with a weapon.

Any other crimes involving knives (non violent) should be left to a judge to decide depending on the situation ( this would be rare)

Legal knife use, don't even worry. All the parties say they will toughen up on knife "crime", Good i hope they do


Exactly.:)
 

jackcbr

Native
Sep 25, 2008
1,561
0
50
Gatwick, UK
www.pickleimages.co.uk
I think ultimately we have to look to the police and how they exercise their discretion on the matter. Unfortunately the generation of fairminded, slap on the wrist coppers has passed. Dare I mention arrest targets.

Better stop before this turns into a rant.
 

pango

Nomad
Feb 10, 2009
380
6
69
Fife
I understand your concerns fully, that banning a certain implement doesn't solve the problem of crime. I'd like to see the data correlating the confiscation of cars used in crime reducing armed robbery, or the seizure of ill gotten gains deterring drug pushers!

The proportion of people carrying pocket knives is probably far greater in rural areas than it is in cities, yet the vast proportion of knife crime is in inner cities and more prevalent in a certain portion of society who see knife carrying as a means of obtaining Street-Cred. There is also the aspect of an escalating weapons race, either carrying a knife because others are doing so, so for self-defence against perceived danger, or a 'My knife is bigger than your knife.' mentality!

As Hangman says, it's a knee-jerk reaction... a means of making it look like something's being done, but knee-jerk reactions don't solve social problems. Children and teenagers are being brutalised in our inner cities, a teenage girl was shot in the neck only a week ago in London while standing outside a take-away, and whether the issue is guns or knives, the roots of the problem are the same and it'll take a damned sight more than political posturing to solve them! It certainly does nothing to counter the well documented trends of poverty, social exclusion and alienation from society leading to the need to belong to a gang.

Our teenage girls are watching TV programmes, directed at teenager girls, with machine-gun totting, teenage karate expert vampire killers killing vampires at 6 o'clock in the evening, and the most horrific images on a hundred video games are normalising brutality in kids bedrooms all over the country. Is there a political party talking about regulating that?

Whatever measures are taken you can be sure they'll be calculated not to harm business, we can't have that!

Banning me from carrying a knife in Lochaber certainly isn't going to prevent a kid being stabbed in Hackney!

Rant over.
 

Paul_B

Bushcrafter through and through
Jul 14, 2008
6,154
1,546
Cumbria
Personally I'm off to shoplift a kitchen knife from my local Tesco's and shank someone on the street who looks at me funny. Oh! I can't I'm not a young person. I'm an outdoors person therefore I'm ok and can carry a knife in an inappropriate place such as town centres without good reason. ;) :D

Does anyone else find these threads just another chance for people to express their same old arguments about young people/police and/or magistrates/political parties/ retailers/legislation/police targets/etc./etc./etc.? Why do the moderators allow these same old rants to go on? The law is as it is. Knife crime is as it is (and how much worse is it now than at other times in the past?). Policing is as it is. And you still have to have a reasonable cause to carry a knife (small non-locking folders excepted or are they excepted?).

Moderators - Can we have a moratorium on knife law threads for a while?
 

salan

Nomad
Jun 3, 2007
320
1
Cheshire
Laws are laws only because the government makes them so. If they said that murder wasn't a crime then the police wouldn't stop it!
Extreme example I know but if we want laws to be changed then we have to make the government change the law.

Also if you are sick of a certain type of thread then don't read it! Thats what I do.
Simples!
Alan
 

Tony

White bear (Admin)
Admin
Apr 16, 2003
24,131
1
1,879
53
Wales
www.bushcraftuk.com
What started off as a straight forward thread expressing the differences in approach to knife law is now slowly turning into the usual ranty thread because people can't just express themselves without labouring the point. I saw the OP at about 7am and thought it was interesting, now it starting it's downwards slope.

We do have a no politics rule but this could be quite relevant to us all whihc is why it was left alone earlier, please keep it on track and don't use it to voice your political/authority grievances
 

Minotaur

Native
Apr 27, 2005
1,600
232
Birmingham
Also, just prior to the consultation to the VCR Act the Metropolitan Police Force had just finished a study into knife crime in London with additional information from other forces around the UK.

This sounds interesting, everything else I have read says they do not know what sort of knifes are used.

The problem with these threads is that the law is written so lawyers can make money. If taxes were fair, and just would the rich need accoutants.
 

Hangman

Tenderfoot
Minotaur, this was released to the national press late October / early November last year - I've been trying hard to get a copy of this report since then, and am being stonewalled - I've contacted the Met and the Ministry of Justice but am getting the runaround as the press articles don't mention the actual name or reference number of the report it's hard to do a FOI request, my next stage will be to contact the newspapers themselves and see what info they have and see if I can get the info on the basis of it's an election coming up and we've had yet more 'bad' / 'embarrassing' news being hidden and what are they trying to hide - at least one paper hopefully will be interested in another failure to actually deal with crime.

From what I understand the types of knives were identified during arrests relating to knife crime and those that had been abandoned at the scene of crime - again making an A&E connection when a victim of knife crime ends up in A&E with the knife still in them it's a pretty cert identification regarding type - I think the official view that they do not know what sort of knives is very suspect IMO.

My own concerns are that had it been released when it was finished it would have come out before the VCRA consultations and it would have made a large dent in the sections of VCRA relating to knives - so why was it sat on for the best part of 4 years?

Why were the lessons in this report NOT taken on board and how many lives has it cost as a result?
 
Last edited:

Minotaur

Native
Apr 27, 2005
1,600
232
Birmingham
Minotaur, this was released to the national press late October / early November last year - I've been trying hard to get a copy of this report since then, and am being stonewalled - I've contacted the Met and the Ministry of Justice but am getting the runaround as the press articles don't mention the actual name or reference number of the report it's hard to do a FOI request, my next stage will be to contact the newspapers themselves and see what info they have and see if I can get the info on the basis of it's an election coming up and we've had yet more 'bad' / 'embarrassing' news being hidden and what are they trying to hide - at least one paper hopefully will be interested in another failure to actually deal with crime.

From what I understand the types of knives were identified during arrests relating to knife crime and those that had been abandoned at the scene of crime - again making an A&E connection when a victim of knife crime ends up in A&E with the knife still in them it's a pretty cert identification regarding type - I think the official view that they do not know what sort of knives is very suspect IMO.

My own concerns are that had it been released when it was finished it would have come out before the VCRA consultations and it would have made a large dent in the sections of VCRA relating to knives - so why was it sat on for the best part of 4 years?

Why were the lessons in this report NOT taken on board and how many lives has it cost as a result?

:lmao:

Of course they hiding it. This is the Government that has perfected the Mushroom system.
 

Trunks

Full Member
May 31, 2008
1,716
10
Haworth
We do have a no politics rule but this could be quite relevant to us all whihc is why it was left alone earlier, please keep it on track and don't use it to voice your political/authority grievances

Sorry Tony, I didn't realize :eek:

I actually think that the knife law - as is - is a quite sophisticated piece of legislation. As i understand it, it does not ban anyone form carrying a knife, if it is for a "valid" reason. If you are carrying a knife in the pub, then you get arrested and charged - i'm very happy and reassured by that.

My concerns were raised after watching the TV program:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...itics_2010_Election_Debates_The_Crime_Debate/


Liberal spokes person said they were happy as things stood, but the conservative rep said they were prepared to take a "zero tolerance approach" and would jail anyone caught carrying a knife in town.

This is what confuses me, earlier in the program it was stated that they wanted to make carrying a knife illegal - does this mean all knifes?

Or would the law, as is, stand. But if you are "in town" with a knife then you go to jail - not that unreasonable - i think if there is a definite distinction drawn between being "in town" and being "in the WOOD" then it could be workable & fair.

Hertsboy, i know there are bigger issues at stake and rightly they will be a deciding factor, but it does no harm to be aware of the facts about things specifically relating to me or my interests.

Again, please heed Tony's advice and remain sensible :eek:
 

BorderReiver

Full Member
Mar 31, 2004
2,693
16
Norfolk U.K.
Our biggest problem as I see it, is that more of the population live in cities now than in the country. Also, most of our legislators live in cities where having a robust knife about your person is seldom necessary.:(
 

Hangman

Tenderfoot
:lmao:

Of course they hiding it. This is the Government that has perfected the Mushroom system.

I know, which is probably part of the reason why we are at the sorry state we are in now with knife crime... http://www.bushcraftuk.com/forum/images/icons/icon9.gif


Trunks said:
I actually think that the knife law - as is - is a quite sophisticated piece of legislation. As i understand it, it does not ban anyone form carrying a knife, if it is for a "valid" reason.

In theory but the police have a long, long way to go yet - having done firelighting displays at a militaria show last year on a pitch booked and paid for by the bushcraft school I work for with company signs and posters I still had idiot plod telling me that I had an offensive weapon. They need much, much better education.

Heck at a slight digression last year 7,000 photographers were stopped from going about thier legal business - again another wonderful piece of knee-jerk legislation that is being ill enforced.


Trunks said:
Or would the law, as is, stand. But if you are "in town" with a knife then you go to jail - not that unreasonable - i think if there is a definite distinction drawn between being "in town" and being "in the WOOD" then it could be workable & fair.

I'd disagree, when I'm not bushcrafting I'm a safety officer and accident investigator - I use a knife as part of my job - I'd hate to be in the position where I could be arrested for having a knife "in town", likewise I went up to Scotland last year by train so went through London again the same concern and given the lack of judgement or discretion of Mr Plod I'd be very concerned, it's too blunt a tool.
 

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