Where is the co-ordinated national platform to solve this problem - with clear goals? Where on earth is it?
Seems to me politicians, the police and civil service are not being held accountable enough on providing transparent visibility to the general populace - and the electorate - on this aspect of crime reduction. What do they get paid for, I often wonder?
The media seem to have gone off the boil on it too; they too aren't perhaps clearly focused on the issue at present - because of the many distractions and problems of life out there I expect. But distraction on this issue costs lives, so who can step up to provide better focus?
Looking at various figures on the web, the best data work is being done by The Guardian online news service it seems but even that appears to not be reporting use of knives in recent months.
As far as I can tell, these are the latest knife crime statistics: Police recorded 22,151 knife offences last year (2012) in England and Wales, including grievous bodily harm, attempted murder, woundings and robbery. But official data isn't published yet I understood - at least it's not on the ONS national statistics site here: UK-crime-stats
And I can't see comparable national crime data for year ending 2011 (or further back), which seems odd as well as not at all transparent. These important figures should be clear... crystal clear.
You can track more detail on this blog about analysis of knife crime statistics over the past few years - and meantime, here's a reasonable current chart from The Guardian showing connected knife / sharp weapon killings data:
This is a matter of great public concern where knives / sharp instrument are by far the greatest cause of injury and death in the UK, yet concerted, co-ordinated targeting is not happening around this most grave of issues.
All I can see from highly-paid politicians and their parties is what comes across as PR spin (that sticks in the throat at times) to indicate they are trying to do 'something'. Well, to my mind, that isn't good enough - it's not focused, it's not precise and there is no accountability. It's just too easy to have it move to the back of minds, back of the queue, and for paid public servants to be 'too busy' elsewhere... (learning to be more honest doing expense forms perhaps, or placing a Thatcher funeral ahead of saving lives?). Depends on your sense of priorities perhaps (or self-importance?).
Anyway, I don't mean to gripe or snipe; it's simply very frustrating to see national control of this issue has dwindled not improved since I last took a closer look at knife crime statistics.
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