Gang Culture & Knife Crime - What Do You Think Can Be Done About It?

I am vehemently anti the notion that we should reintroduce National service Ellie. All that we would end up with is trained and fit thugs. Why should the Armed Forces be landed with society's rejects? They have a hard enough job to do without legions of disaffected youths cluttering up the place. Apart from the two World Wars and immediately after, we have never had National Service. What there was before was respect for each other. There was also rampant class consciousness, we all "knew our place" and tended to stay there. Actually, crime was probably worse in the Victorian era than now. What we are now experiencing is something that we seem powerless to control. Whilst we both have children at Universities, I do think that too many go and that many would be better served by being offered proper apprenticeships (rather than the "Modern Apprenticeship" which is worthless). However, to do that, we need to build up our manufacturing base that successive governments since Mrs Thatcher have systematically destroyed. This is now almost impossible to do because the cost of labour is so high here that we cannot compete with the emerging economies of China and India. Punishments do not fit the crime any more, and don't seem to work. No doubt somebody will send these murdering little darlings off on an all expenses trip to somewhere exotic as they are "misunderstood". In the old days of corse, we simply sent our criminals to Australia - they made such a good job of being there, that now half of us want to emigrate without having the decency of a criminal record. (Sorry Goodie or Sue if you are reading this). Sorry if I ranted there Ellie. I am as frustrated as you by this whole mess.

Ellie, this is sad situation here! Youngsters are so unruly today. I was so dumb as a kid! I think this has to do with mostly proper parenting and also openess in the society and media. The other day I was watching youtube only to be amazed by the staggering number of videos on crime.

We have also that problem in our City ellie and the curfew being implemented was very effective to mimimize the accident. Parents too play a vital role in this matter, they have to monitor who are the friends of their kids,what are the activities and the like, so, as early as that stage, they can be corrected and be guided.It is very sad to note and hear young kids dying due to this act.

Hi Ellie I really believe that National Service it would teach these hooligans a lesson and perhaps they would come out with some respect for their elders to be polite decent human beings that will have learnt a career and able to get a good job...this generation are just totally out of control and don't have any direction in their lives it is frightening how the next generation are going to turn out-love and huggles littleowl

Boys do have natural aggression in their teenage years as I am finding out with my eldest who is 16. He is so angry all the time, he says he cannot help it, I think it is all his hormones racing about. I also think that this is where some of them end up channelling their energy in the wrong directions and maybe joining gangs. All the kids in gangs are going through the same thing, together they are a bad combination. I do think that some kind of national service should be fetched in to be honest, it would give them something positive to challenge all their angst into.

Hey there, I think there is no such thing as absolute security. there's no way to assure that a child is going to be safe from any harm. However, to be smart, what we can do is to make sure that our children do not get involved in a brutal environment. Maybe a little bit of simple rules like no going out after 11. Monitoring who the friends he go out with might be a good thing but sometimes the child might lash out and thinks you are trying to control them. So it's hard being a parent.

I'm not sure what will help to stop this kind of activity with these teenagers. girls are just as bad these days too. My daughter is 16 and she tells me all kinds of things that happen at her school and what some of the kids are doing after school. It makes me sick that are younger generations minds are so corrupted. I think this kind of activity has gone on too long and something needs to be done before it gets alot worse. I think these teenagers need more constructive things to do with their time. there should be activities for them to all come together to stop the violence.

hi ellie,now a days teenagers are very aggressive..i sometimes watch the news about that kind of thing and it was scary..here in korea middle school and high school students did that too i think this is the influence of movies or tvs.

Hi, ellie, younger generations now are hard to cope with, i have to say, although myself's not old. My younger brothers,, i don't know how can they come up those peculiar ideas, and it's even difficult for me to persuade them, let alone their parents. TV shows, magazines and internet may have to be blamed for this phenomena. I don't mean they're not good, they present difficult perspectives and cultures, but teenagers are not old enough to choose, they take all they meet. But can we forbid these programmes, absolutely not. Maybe we should educate children at a much younger age, first thing is to tell them from right and wrong. **Enjoy life~~**