An anti-knife crime campaigner has said the government must do more to tackle the growing problem of knife crime by making education on the subject compulsory.
Alison Cope, whose son was murdered in 2013, revealed she has not spoken at a school where they had not experienced some form of crime involving knives or fights.
Speaking to GB News, Alison Cope said: “Knife crime has been spiralling out of control for quite a while now and we have the same conversations, we have these horrific headlines and yet we're still not getting a grip of it.
“And I don't know how many more young people have to be injured or killed in this country to become a priority. It just doesn't seem that children matter as much as other things do in this country, unfortunately.
“A lot of my work at the moment is focused on the online issues that every young person in this country faces, which is why we’re finding it so difficult to pinpoint a cause, to really grab hold of it or to resolve it.
“Because we've got young people arranging fights outside schools, running towards fights, taking weapons out of fear: there's so many issues and all we're doing is having a brief conversation about it and then moving on to the next topic.
“I wish government would take a step back and really invest their time and effort in having a look at how to address the next few years to something that actually is successful, because it's getting absolutely ridiculous at this point.
“You can’t ban mindset, you can certainly influence mindset, though.
“For example, in the West Midlands the number one murder weapon is the kitchen knife. So, banning zombie knives and swords is obviously very, very important. Making them harder to have access to is obviously important, but the mindset is absolutely destroyed in this country.
“So for me, the only real way we're going to start to get a grip of all the young people's mindset is through compulsory education. We all bang on about the importance of education, the government’s had every bit of research, every bit of information they need to say this is where we need to really focus and yet it hasn't been made compulsory in education.
“We've got millions of young people in this country who are being influenced by what's on social media and we sold them a dream and unfortunately it is now backfiring.
“For me it's not about saying to a person, ‘don't do this, don't do that.’ Where, historically, has that ever worked?
“It's about really showing the young person the implications of picking up that weapon, the implications of getting involved with drama, representing yourself negatively online of where it can actually lead to, and making your people realize that if there's 10 million views on videos saying it's okay, but then we're saying it's not, it's making sure that our message is stronger than that than the message that some young people are receiving at the moment.
“And that's where the whole debate about youth centres, youth workers, support for schools comes in, but the government for some reason can't seem to prioritize the money for that, because they're prioritising other things.
“For me, personally, I think the problem is everywhere, which is a shocking thing to say. Every single city is seeing a number of stabbings per day.
“I haven't been to a single school where they haven't had an incident, they haven't had a weapon carried, they haven't had a pre-arranged bite that's led to an injury. Not one school that I've been to has said, 'Everything's okay here.'"
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