Make kitchen knives safer to help reduce crime

Government statistics released in July revealed that last year there were 50,510 knife crimes — a 4 per cent increase. NHS data showed a 3 per cent increase in hospital admissions for assault by a sharp object, taking the total to 3,888.
Significantly, in homicide cases where a sharp instrument was identified as the cause of death, more than half the weapons were kitchen knives. Zombie knives, samurai swords and Rambo knives grab the headlines, but they only accounted for 8 per cent of such homicides. It is the knives in kitchen drawers that are frequently the most lethal weapons.
Ministers aim to halve knife crime in a decade. The government plans to ban ninja swords, zombie blades and machetes, and strengthen rules to prevent online sales.
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Those proposals are fine, so far as they go, but they will not on their own halve knife crime. My experience as a circuit judge is that many serious offences were committed by teenagers who took knives from their mothers’ kitchen drawers on the spur of the moment, without thinking about the consequences. The same is true of domestic violence. Kitchen knives are often the closest weapon to hand.
Knife crime is a complex, multi-faceted problem. There is no single, simple solution, but there are more basic steps that should be taken.
First, manufacturers and retailers should change the design of kitchen knives so they have rounded ends, not pointed tips. Any knife can cause an injury, but slash wounds from blades are rarely fatal. It is the points of knives that cause life-threatening or fatal injuries.
The government should meet with manufacturers, shops and police and act together to provide alternatives with rounded ends and reduce the sale of long, pointed knives. In the past, small changes have significantly reduced mortality — for example, suicide rates reduced after limits were brought in on the number of paracetamol tablets which could be sold.
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Second, there should be a pricing differential between rounded and pointed knives to deter the purchase of pointed knives. The charge of 5p for every disposable plastic bag significantly reduced their use. If every pointed knife cost, say, £10 more than the equivalent rounded knife, sales of pointed knives would decline.
That money, whether as a sales tax or a voluntary agreed levy by manufacturers and retailers, could finance a scheme for supermarkets or high street key cutters to modify pointed knives and pay money or give food vouchers to anyone who brought in a knife to have the point rounded.
These measures would not end knife crime, but they would go a long way to meeting the government’s target.Nic Madge is a former circuit judge