The proliferation of “knife crime” and street violence is everyone’s concern. The traumatic effects of such an event can be critically damaging to both the victim and the perpetrator, though perhaps in different ways.
The perpetrator feels empowered by his action at that moment. He feels excited, vibrant, alive. But in quiet moments away from his companions, when he is alone with the images of blood and violence in his mind. Perhaps with the death of another human being or his grievous injury etched into his conscience and credited to his psyche, the sentiment may not be as glorious.
At least 37 people have been stabbed to death and 62 in total have died in London alone since the start of the year. The local administration blames government cuts on police budgets. The government blames the lack of available funds. The police blame the proliferation of gangs and drug traffickers.
In truth, it’s quite likely that all of these things have a role to play, but is that really the whole story? Is it just a simple case of too many mobsters and too few police or do we need to look a little deeper?
Watching a documentary on this topic recently, I realized that the fifteen-year-old interviewee who owned a huge hunting knife with a serrated edge, clearly a murder weapon, was neither a psychopathic killer nor harbored true killing intent. . His main reason for having such a weapon in his possession was self-protection. In other words, this potential killer was a very frightened and very vulnerable young man.
A young individual, so frightened by the effects of an economically stressed family environment and a school system with a conventional curriculum that, while promoting education as a path to success, fails to address the real impact of discrimination and other practices unfair in the “ideal”. world view and innate sense of fair play, of the young and the innocent, that the certainty of the law of the jungle of “kill or be killed” makes more sense and has more value than the pursuit of educational success.
So what does this young man have left as a vision for his future? What is the likely end result of being successful through education? After perhaps twenty years of formal education and life skills, the individual faces severely limited options to achieve a standard of living above the poverty level.
Very few people in their twenties or even thirties after graduating and gaining five years of business experience can get into a job where they earn a salary of £30,000 or £40,000 a year, which is the level of income needed to maintain a healthy life, in many communities. Many are more likely not to get that job, so even as graduates they are relegated to restaurants, bars and coffee shops.
With this image in mind, the path to educational success does not seem so attractive. Add to this the level of discrimination and unfair treatment that is applied to certain groups in society, such as BMEs or women, and the image becomes unattractive, even unpleasant.
Naturally, the concept of enduring a 20-year indoctrination process, to secure a job where you can barely feed yourself and can’t even buy a house, as well as the lack of expectation of being treated or paid fairly is totally less atractive. In fact, it can now be placed in the category of “why would I want to do that?” Is there any other way?
Any teenager on the planet can see that given the scenario presented to them, they are about to enter a dark world of unbearable pain and suffering. A world that, although defined by material wealth, offers the average adult individual very few accessible options for acquiring real financial security.
You can already see that without money or a legitimate means to acquire a lot of money on a regular basis, your existence is full of terrifying unknowns, unanswered questions, insecurities, uncertainties and real life dangers, leading to even greater situations. fear, increased anxiety and crushing disappointment.
What looms in his futuristic vision is not Olympic gold and glory, but unmet need, poverty, prison and doom.
They still have wishes, nice car, nice house, nice clothes. They still have ambitions, beautiful wife, beautiful children, beautiful life. How are they going to accomplish this without the hope of educational success or the expectation of fair treatment?
A great question. So what is the answer? The answer is, of course, “by any means necessary…”.
