These are not school ‘knife’ incidents, the trend is down, the TWO actual stabbings took place OUT of school by gang members and knife crimes have plummeted here to only half the level under Labour/Lib Dems 20 years ago

The Herald today, taking a turn on knife crime, to give the Daily Record a day off?

It’s another naked piece of data fiddling to treat you like a fracking idiot. To be fair, they don’t hide the actual facts once they’ve set the scene falsely in the headline. They’ll be thinking no one reads beyond the headlines these days.

What are the facts?

  1. Recorded crime incidents in schools where a blade article or ‘point’ was ‘concerned’ fell from 149 to 127 last year.
  2. That’s 0.04% of the secondary school population.
  3. The above term does not in any way simply equate to ‘knife.’
  4. The only trend in these four years is slightly down with minor yearly variations.
  5. Not one of the violent incidents in the report took place in a school but rather took place on a beach and in the street in the context of gang-related conflict.

Highlight of the report, not for the first time, comes from the mouth of Alex Cole-Hamilton!

Let’s have a look at some real facts on knife crime in Scotland

In Scotland in 2006/2007, there were just over 4 000 recorded crimes of ‘having in a public place and article with a blade or point.’ By 2016/2017, the figure had fallen by half to just over 2 000.1

By 2019/2020, the figure had climbed to 2 666 before falling again to 2 582 last year.2

In England & Wales, in the same year, there were 50 500 cases, nearly 20 times as many and nearly twice as many per head of population.3

With particular regard to the extremely dangerous ‘Rambo’ or ‘Zombie’ knives, there were 15 cases recorded in 2023/2024 in Scotland.4 In England & Wales, ‘in 2023, ‘zombie’ knives, ‘rambo’ knives, swords and machetes were mentioned in more than 14,000 crimes, recorded.’5

This 900 to 1 ratio, 90 to 1 per head of population, is shocking and were it reversed, Scotland’s media would be feeding on it daily.

Sources:

  1. https://www.gov.scot/publications/recorded-crime-scotland-handling-offensive-weapons/pages/3/
  2. https://www.gov.scot/publications/recorded-crime-scotland-2023-24/pages/1/
  3. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn04304/
  4. https://www.gov.scot/publications/recorded-crime-scotland-2023-24/
  5. https://geppsolicitors.co.uk/site/blog/criminal-law-news/knife-crime-in-the-uk-can-banning-zombie-knives-curb-the-violence/#:~:text=In%202023%2C%20%E2%80%98zombie%E2%80%99%20knives%2C%20swords%20and%20machetes%20were,of%20these%20involved%20machetes%2C%20swords%20and%20%E2%80%98zombie%E2%80%99%20knives.

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2 thoughts on “These are not school ‘knife’ incidents, the trend is down, the TWO actual stabbings took place OUT of school by gang members and knife crimes have plummeted here to only half the level under Labour/Lib Dems 20 years ago”

  1. On top of several threats ‘of’, I was ‘stabbed’ (just poked but blood drawn) by compasses and other ‘points’ umpteen times in school.

    Mind you that was the ‘Age of Lead.’

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  2. You are right to debunk this story which is part of the ‘lawless Britain’ mendacity launched by Reform some years ago and taken up enthusiastically by the media and by the other unionist parties in Scotland.

    Crime is actually falling, not just in Scotland, but in much of the more affluent countries of the world, except in places like the United States. The lack of context and selective use of data underpins these reports. The fact that crime is falling does not mean crimes are not happening. They are, but they are happening less often.

    This is why the media focus on particular incidents, framing them in such a way to nudge readers into generalising them to suggest crime is ‘rife’. They also use ‘vox pops’, preferably lurid and exaggerated terminology, rather than data to pad out the reports.

    As you say, ‘pointed’ objects are not always knives. For example a comb with a handle can be so described, or compasses used in mathematics. Most penknives, which almost all boys of my generation (born 1947) carried had short blades and were not too sharp. They could, of course, cause injury, but we used them for tasks like sharpening our pencils and cutting knots in shoelaces. Many teachers routinely carried penknives – male teachers often used them to cut their blocks of tobacco for their pipes!

    Around 2000, it was made mandatory for schools to report to the police any occasion where someone in school was in possession of a knife (other than in home economics, woodwork and metal work, art and craft, science, in the school canteen). There was no discretion for the Head Teacher – it had to be reported. Even if a child, who had been fishing at the weekend with his grandfather, still had the fishing knife in his pocket when he came to school and voluntarily handed the knife to a teacher, it had to be reported to the police and recorded. Before this, schools would have kept the knife in a safe place until the end of the school day, when the child would take it home or the school office would phone the mammy or granny who would come up and collect it.

    Once data is required to be collected the media, politicians and teacher union reps will misuse it.

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