Knife Crime Starts with Unmet Needs
Knife Crime Awareness Week is an important moment to pause and reflect on the harm knife violence causes to children, families and communities.
It’s also an opportunity to look beyond headlines and listen to what we know from working with young people, and those supporting them, about what knife crime really looks like in their lives.
Knife crime is often treated as an issue of behaviour. But what we see in practice is something very different - it’s a symptom of unmet need, harm and exploitation. At Safer London, this understanding shapes how we work - focusing on relationships, context and the experiences driving behaviour, rather than the behaviour alone. The way we understand and respond matters. Judgements made about young people shapes whether they’re supported or pushed further into harm.
We spoke to one of our caseworkers who works directly with children and young people affected by violence, including those carrying knives and those involved in serious incidents of harm. When asked about intent they were clear - “I can’t say I’ve worked with anyone who is or who has been carrying a knife because they’re actually intent on doing harm to anyone.”
“He feels he has to protect himself, protect mum.”
We can’t reduce knife crime without addressing the systems and environments that create and sustain risk. Responses that focus only on stopping behaviour often fall short. “There’s a whole story that’s led up to it,” the caseworker said. “They’re not going to stop carrying a knife until we’ve dealt with why they’re carrying it.”
Talking about why young people carry knives, the caseworker described two themes that come up repeatedly. The first is about belonging. “They’re trying to find an identity and trying to find a group to belong to.” Alongside this, trauma and fear often sit beneath young people’s decisions. “A lot of them have been victims of some sort of trauma quite young and it’s a fear factor for them carrying,” they explained.
One young person they supported had been carrying a knife since childhood. “He witnessed his mum almost being attacked by a man with a knife when he was 10 and since then he’s carried one,” they said. “He feels he has to protect himself, protect mum.” Experiences like this are not isolated. They reflect a wider pattern where young people’s actions are shaped by what has happened to them, what they’ve seen - and what they fear may happen next.
Over the past year, around one in four safeguarding concerns raised at Safer London involved knives or bladed weapons. Nearly one in three of the most serious safeguarding cases involved knife-related risk, often affecting the same children more than once. These concerns were recorded throughout the year, showing this isn’t a seasonal issue but a constant presence in some young people’s lives.
Earlier this year, the Government published Protecting Lives, Building Hope. The plan sets out a welcome shift towards prevention and early intervention, recognising that knife crime is not inevitable and that many children and young people involved are victims first. But how support is delivered - and when it’s available - matters. Across systems, young people are often seen in binary terms - either as victims or as perpetrators. In reality, many are both, and responses need to reflect that complexity. As our caseworker put it - “You’ve got to reject the behaviour without rejecting the person.”
Risk isn’t static. It increases at key points of transition, particularly as children move into adolescence and gain greater independence, are exposed to new peer groups and spend more time outside the home. Yet these are often the moments when support drops away or becomes more fragmented. A transitional safeguarding approach recognises that young people don’t suddenly become safer at 18, and that support needs to reflect the reality of their lives rather than the boundaries of services. That means making sure there is consistent support not just for under 18s, but into early adulthood.
If we want to reduce harm, we must start with by listening to those directly impacted. Young people themselves understand the pressures, risks and realities shaping their choices. Too often, these insights are overlooked in favour of top-down responses. At Safer London, our work starts with what young people are telling us - and we use that to shape how we design and deliver support.
“Every boy I worked with in prison, bar maybe three, had been excluded.”
Schools are often a critical point for intervention, particularly where attendance drops or exclusion becomes a risk. The seriousness of a child bringing a knife into school isn’t in question. “Schools have to protect people,” the caseworker said. But exclusion isn’t always the right response. “I don’t think exclusion is the appropriate response… it makes them way more vulnerable.” When the underlying issues relate to identity, belonging and unmet need, removing a young person can increase risk rather than reduce it. As the caseworker put it - “Every boy I worked with in prison, bar maybe three, had been excluded.”
Relationships sit at the centre of risk, but also of protection. Young people are deeply influenced by their peer networks and interventions that focus only on individuals can miss the wider dynamics shaping behaviour. “There’s a lot of value in doing peer group interventions,” the caseworker explained. This doesn’t mean delivering one-off sessions to entire classes but working with the actual friendship groups that shape young people’s day-to-day lives. “Trying to work with everyone individually, when you’re saying the friends are the problem, doesn’t work… we need to work with all of them together.”
Group work in this sense isn’t just about delivering information. It’s about creating safe spaces, building healthier relationships, shifting group dynamics - and supporting both prevention and recovery. At Safer London, we’re developing peer group interventions that work directly with young people and the relationships shaping their lives - recognising that risk and protection don’t sit with individuals alone, but within the groups around them.
Knife Crime Awareness Week should be a starting point, not the end of the conversation.
Reducing harm requires more than awareness. It requires sustained investment in relationships, early support and systems that respond to children as children, with needs, experiences and potential, not just risks to be managed. This is what guides and shapes our approach at Safer London - putting young people, their experiences and their potential at the centre of our work and support.
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