Thread by @DrJamesCMorgan

The point knife crime conference @UniKent opened up by @AlexStevensKent #thepoint

Prof John Pitts now discussing knife crime in the context of #countylines

According to Pitts #knifecrime offences peaked in 2009, although it is possible 2019 may usurp that figure #thepoint

For every 100,000 ppl there were 40 stabbing in the north east, >150 for greater London - therefore London is the epicenter of uk #knifecrime

Why do knife crime figures spike, according to John Pitts:

Tit for that retribution
Junior gang members wishing to climb the ladder
Influential ppl coming out of prison
Fluctuations in drug market dynamics

#thepoint

John Pitts adds that since the riots many young people feel they are immune from the police #thepoint

Pitts hopes we may be experiencing a spike in #knifecrime which could soon end #thepoint

John Pitts also says risks of #knifecrime determined by geography and ethnicity #thepoint

"you can map where the danger is" - unfortunately. Technical hitch means we cannot see the maps and graphics produced by John Pitts #thepoint

John Pitts alludes to the public health approach developed by Gary Slatkin in Ethiopia: it depends who you associate with. Same for disease and knife crime

Gary Slatkin found that you need credible voices to spread public health messages. Same may be true for #knifecrime #thepoint

Prof Pitts also heaps praise on the Boston ceasefire projet

Police worked with community organisations
Eventually this diffused community tensions
Joint message sent out from policy and community leaders
Zero tolerance policing against those involved in youth violence

Young people involved in violence offered educational schemes or threat of continued police harassment. Homicides dropped during this scheme, and increased after it was curtailed. Replicated in Manchester #thepoint #knifecrime

Prof Pitts finishes: most interventions direct those arrested to e.g. anger management courses, weapons awareness programs. Not useful.

Interventions should go further and be more holistic. Practitioners should be embedded in communities to gain trust and understanding #thepoint

Next up Dr Tara Young discussing young women on road, both in terms of offending and victimisation #knifecrime #onroad #thepoint

Although gang crime is makes up a small proportion of recorded crime in makes up a high proportion of serious violence #thepoint

The recent increase in violence by young women has spurred research interest. Often explanations centre on men's rolls in gang violence

Media constructions of the female gangster use sensational terms to discuss violent and nasty thugs - just like the boys #thepoint

However, research shows you women, even when involved, commit less violence than men, less serious violence and tend to victimise other young women #thepoint

According to Dr Young it is the 'on road lifestyle' shapes these young women's violent behaviour

Dr young avoids the terms 'gang' - little consensus on what it means but is overly used to describe black and brown youths. And it has severely negative connotations #thepoint

Dr Tara Young prefers 'on road' to 'gang membership' - on road means a space where young people survive in poor urban areas, a place to find freedom from abuse and violence. Where they learn to live, and importantly survive #thepoint

Living on road one must cultivate a reputation. Often this reputation, needed for protection, is gained by violence #thepoint

How many young women are on road? Estimates vary wildly, although it is fairly rare #thepoint #knifecrime

Women occupy traditional gender roles on road - according to Dr Young

Young women on road are more likely to be from deprived areas and exposed to all sorts of difficulty and pain in their lives and upbringings. Much exposure to violence both as perpetrators and victims

Women may go on road as rebellion and to feel empowered. However they enter a world where the agency if women is curtailed by men #thepoint

Women protect themselves through connections to men with violent reputations

Women also draw on their own capitals and competencies to keep themselves safe. Sometimes aggression against other young women will be done to grow street reputations. If this can't be done they will more likely attach themselves to high status men #thepoint

Dr young closes: Women with lower street statuses (e.g. skets) are to be without agency and more likely to be victimised by both men and women on road #knifecrime #thepoint

Being on road is risky to girls even though they are often peripheral to the business and violence of the men #thepoint

On road men and women try to survive, the pressures of the road mean they are both victims and victimisers

Dr Erin Sanders-Mcdonagh now reports on her research #thepoint

Poverty is a huge driver of youth violence. More surprising was the impact of homelessness amongst youths and their journey into gang membership

Conducting life story interviews she heard traumatic stories of young people for whom gang membership appeared inevitable from an early age

Most carried knives from a young age for protection, but this was not related to gang membership

'knives as a habit is really important here'

'youth offending institutions don't work' - young people say these places make them worse

'school exclusion and pupil referral units are very important'

'Young people grow up in households without trust, gangs were there first family'

'Social isolation was most salient in the study' - young people were lonely and did not have people to talk to. Young people were so affected by this that related questions were pulled from interview schedules #thepoint

'multi agency partnership, when done properly can have great results'

To close: the key results relate to social isolation

Prof David Shennigns up to discuss trauma and youth violence

Prof Shennings is discussing the overlap between hotspots of violence, and hot spots of young people using buses late at night

Looking to trauma prof Shennings differentiated between event based and relationship trauma

Those with experience of relationship trauma may be drawn in to the on road 'family'

Prof Shennings discusses PTSD, but questions the 'd' - it is a very logical response to a traumatic incident, it's not a 'disorder'

To close: relational trauma needs relational care #thepoint #knifecrime

Post-tea Prof Susan McVie will discuss the reduction of youth violence

And she is ok twitter @susanmcvie

Prof @susanmcvie starts by discussing the history of violence in Scotland. Culturally violence was accepted as a response to certain issues. Including territorial disputes #thepoint

Prof mcvie tells us that although Scotland does not stand out in terms of violence in general, but has had high levels of serious violence, due to knife crime

Summary of police recording of violence in Scotland from @susanmcvie #thepoint

Violence in Scotland peaked in the 90s before then declining. But aggregate violence must be broken down

Homicide (red line) low in volume and shows less variation over time. Robbery and attempted murder appear to correlate #thepoint

2006/7 appears important, so prof McVie will focus on this year. Higher violence on the west than the east. But since then biggest decreases in violence found in western Scotland #thepoint

Declines in the violence, now less variation between areas #thepoint

How to police reports and survey figures of violence relate?

Biggest reductions in Scottish violence have involved young men fighting with knives. Domestic violence has not declined so steeply #thepoint

Prevalence of violence in Scottish communities has halted, but it remains unchanged in the most deprived neighborhoods. @susanmcvie calls this a poverty trap

What reduced the violence?

Intensive stop and search may have had an effect short term, but not long term

What caused violence to drop in Scotland?

Heavy political pressure
Enforcement
Engagement
Education
Empowerment

What does a public health approach to cutting violence mean? There is no agreement #thepoint #knifecrime

@susanmcvie says highly trained outsiders should not parachute into communities as long term they cannot help so much. Instead assets within the community should be encouraged to grow #thepoint

Great chart from @susanmcvie

Violence in changing. Harms may have moved from the streets to online, and we don't measure online violence. We do more at home and less in public, for better or worse. This might explain why domestic violence has not reduced #thepoint

To conclude:

Serious violence has declined
Minor violence (i.e. most of it) has declined less
Shallower decline of homicide
Violence now more concentrated
Insufficient evidence and evaluation to know what worked

That was excellent from @susanmcvie , one of the most engaging quantitative paper I've heard #ThePoint #knifecrime

Now Niven Rennie @ayrshirespeaker on his own work reducing violence #thepoint

Niven Rennie tells us both homicide and hospital admissions for violence have majorly declined in Scotland. This could be due to Scotland's (albeit vague) public health approach

'As alcohol consumption moves inside, so does violence' - the problem with cheap off-licence booze says Niven Rennie

Niven Rennie also complains that school exclusions compound risks of violence. Mr Rennie worked hard to reduce school exclusions so only one child was permanently excluded in Glasgow last year. Wow. In England we have a problem #thepoint

Niven Rennie (@ayrshirespeaker ) finishes by saying we must reduce equality and be a more equal society in order to reduce violences

Embarrassingly I missed the name on the current speaker and have lost my program. He tells us that risks can be reduced by removing #thepoint on knives. This reminds the speaker of how suicides rescued once household gas was no longer toxic

Moving to get another speaker who's name I missed we are hearing about the addiction to violence. Makes a point that practitioners are often scared of those who they should work with

Researchers often research from youth clubs, where seriously violent young people will not be found

He asks us who are us have been terrified of death in the last year. Few hands went up. This makes us different to those who carry knives, for whom fear of death happens most days

The speaker makes a good point that young gang members are different to members of organised crime groups

To conclude: we need to understand addiction to violence in order reduce violence

Great point made by @ayrshirespeaker in q&a that media campaigns with scary knife pictures are foolish, since it is fear that motivates knife carrying #thepoint

Good sandwiches. Lots of them. And now we're back at #thepoint #knifecrime conference

Next , prof Jane reeves discussing solutions to knife crime from a social workers perspective #ThePoint

'lots of what we are talking about is child abuse and child protection' - prof reeves perspective #ThePoint

Prof reeves looked into the evidence base behind the anti-knife chicken boxes. There is no research, no evidence base at all #ThePoint

Successful approaches

New ideas to preventing child abuse #thepoint

Uses of VR, simulation and gaming for safety purposes, techniques borrowed for child protection #ThePoint

These simulators are used to train professionals in child protection #thepoint

Contextual safeguarding #thepoint

Improvements in after using simulators

Next speaker: Katy Jackson discussing the social history of pointed knives #thepoint

Why to knives have points? The answer is that since they predated forks, they were needed for moving food, not only cutting food. #thepoint

Louis xiv banned the use of pointed in knives, due to regular dinner table violence

When you need to sharpen a knife, the pointy tip will return, however since we no longer sharpen many of our kitchen knives the point is redundant but still dangerous #thepoint

Table knives have no point, neither do many popular knives. So why the point on our kitchen knives? #thepoint

To conclude: there is no point in the point of a knife #thepoint

Final speaker session of the day:

Knife crime continues to increase, while fatalities from knives do not

In countries without easy access to guns, knives are the major murder weapon

Kitchen knives most often a murder weapon, a stat propped up by domestic violence #thepoint

We must keep perspective when discussing UK violence. US gun crime a far bigger issue than UK knife crime #thepoint

Imported attack knives are not the big issue. Kitchen knives are. There should be a drive to blunt to point off our kitchen knives #thepoint

In experiments the researchers found that men stab with double the force that women do, albeit in a sample of undergraduates #thepoint

Significant difference in ability of tipless knife to penetrate flesh #thepoint

Longer knives with a more rounded tip is the least likely to flesh, wearing thicker clothing (e.g. leather jacket) could keep you safe #thepoint

More and less deadly knife designs #thepoint

Conclusions: #thepoint

Final speaker is discussing stabbing via kitchen knife from his work in A&E #thepoint

'when people know what knife they were stabbed with, it's always a kitchen knife' - he relates to drive to safer kitchen knives to to use of plastic parts pint 'glasses'

One is a WW1 German bayonet. One is a kitchen knife, why do they look the same? This is a problem #thepoint

The skin is very strong and hard to penetrate. Once the knife of through skin, it will naturally slide in to the hilt #thepoint

New design of safer kitchen knife #thepoint

Seat belts took 18 years but saved lives, we should think about knives in this way #thepoint

Wonderful day and brilliant thinking, ideas and evidence summed up by organiser @AlexStevensKent - top work all involved #thepoint - hope lives can be saved by these ideas

Prof @AlexStevensKent points to a history where reducing to opportunity or ease of committing harm, tends to do a good job of reducing harm #thepoint