Thursday, December 07, 2006

Knives out for knife amnesties!

Who could have predicted that knife amnesties have no real impact on reducing knife crime?

In late August 2006 - six weeks after the operation ends - offence levels tend to return to pre-operation values

"Amnesties needed to be used in conjunction with other initiatives" like tougher and longer prison sentences perhaps?

Can we look forward to a similar study looking at the impact of a gun amnesty on gun crime?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If the penalty for carrying a knife - forget about using it - was, say, 10 years you would find an amnesty unecessary. The thugs would be falling over themselves to get rid of them.

Instead, we treat them as if they are suffering from a problem not of their making and for which we try our best to help them deal with, the poor loves.

How they must chortle.

Snafu said...

Gary, I totally agree. Increasiung the risk of being caught by increasing the number of stop and searches would also have a significant impact.

I would expect such measures to reduce the prison population over time too.