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We're winning fight against knife crime
THE battle against knife crime is being won, according to Richard Taylor father of the murdered schoolboy Damilola.
Mr Taylor whose wife Gloria died six years after their 10-year-old son was stabbed in the East End in 2000, was opening a conference on Gang Culture and Violence in Headingley, Leeds, attended by delegates from the worlds of policing, justice, education,youth work, health and the armed forces.
"Knife crime is being addressed. Instant action has been taken, the rate is coming steadily down."
"It is something that had never been addressed really before. Now we have to make sure that it is."
"The sudden increase in knife crime really shocked me and it frightens people that young people are into such atrocities, that we see on our streets," said Mr Taylor, who was appointed the PM's envoy on the problem in March.
"On visits to schools and in discussions with young people the revelation is that children as young as nine carry knives and some are asked by older ones to carry the knives for them."
On why youngsters carry knives, Mr Taylor said: "I think it's peer pressure. Some feel it is 'cool' to carry knives. But it is usually only those who come from a background of violence."
Mr Taylor, head of the Damilola Trust set-up to bring "life, opportunity and hope" to Britain's underprivileged youth has previously called for the death penalty.
"It will not happen in my lifetime. But we want total use of the law that exists. If there is a case of premeditated murder that person should go in for a total life sentence."
The two teenagers convicted of the manslaughter of Damilola in 2006 got three years.
"Is three years commensurate with the loss of a young boy's innocent life? Those boys cannot really have learnt anything," he said.
Also at the conference was reformed Essex gangland member Carlton Leach who said: "Now knives are a status symbol. It is like putting on nice clothing. It's seen as 'cool.' But that's wrong. We live in a violent society and there is always conflict in the underworld. Today the media brings violence into the home and it becomes ' the thing to be'," he said.
Those combating violence needed contact with those involved to understand their world, he said.
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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