In recent years, there has been growing acceptance that societal factors are its driving forces.Ī study titled Young People and Street Crime, commissioned by the Youth Justice Board across 32 London boroughs, illustrated that when other relevant social and economic factors were taken into account, race and ethnicity had no significance at all.Īnd while it is too early to know exactly what was behind these stabbings, it has left families bereft. “If we don’t we could end up with a lost generation of young people who think carrying a knife is the only way to stay alive.” “We have to ask how much more death and serious harm it will take before the government recognises that this is a crisis which needs urgent action – and that this action needs to go beyond stop and search to asking how we ensure every young person has the mental health and mentoring support they need. “No family should have to deal with the pain of losing a child, let alone to do so at the hands of another – yet across the country many are and many more are living with the epidemic of youth and violent crime that we are facing,” said Creasy. The Labour MP Stella Creasy said the spate of stabbings showed that the “epidemic” of youth crime needed urgent action. Wazabakana Elenda “Jordan” Kukabu, 18, was found with a stab wound to his chest near Dagenham Heathway tube station after police were called to reports of men armed with machetes, while Sebastian Zon, 27, was killed at a flat in Hackney. On the eve of the coronation, with the nation looking the other way, the teenager was one of three people stabbed to death in separate incidents in east London over eight hours.

A prosecutor said he was ambushed with a machete as he left school in Walthamstow, east London, last Friday. Eight months later, the 16-year-old Arsenal fan was killed in what police described as a brutal attack.

A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks