Walking to the first interview for this project, I noticed a young boy sitting on a wall a few roads down from my north London flat. He had his head in his hands and his body shook gently, quiet sobs erupting as his feet dangled above the ground. Opposite him lay a sea of flowers, some wilting, others fresh, weather-worn cards, their rain-defeated ink fading into illegibility and candles laid out to form the initials ‘JH’. When I came back home five hours later, he was still there. It’s a memorial Londoners have walked past countless times since it appeared in early January, at the site where 24-year-old Jonah Ho-Shue was stabbed to death. He was the first person to be killed on London’s streets this year. Around the capital, it is not uncommon to see shrines like this — tributes to lives cut tragically short. In many ways, knife crime is a hyper-visible problem in London. It is a fear which can sometimes lie dormant, and then be lit ablaze when a particularly senseless tragedy hits the headlines, such as the killing of 15-year-old schoolgirl Elianne Andam, or 16-year-old Harry Pitman at the end of last year. Until 2016, youth violence in the capital was widely understood to be falling — down from a peak in 2009. Then the numbers started climbing again. The 2020 lockdown seemed to provide some respite, as rates of stabbings decreased for the first time in half a decade, but knife crime in London has risen each year since the pandemic, with a 22 per cent increase in Met Police recorded offences involving a knife or sharp instrument in the last year (up to September 2023). It is undoubtedly a complex and fraught issue — even the stats can be hard to make sense of. Often, a sensationalised media and political reaction collapses all context. Moral panic about gangs, a loosely defined term, but one usually reserved for Black boys, abounds, and politicians promise harsher sentencing or crackdowns on forms of culture associated with the Black community, like drill music. But away from opportunistic politicking and tabloid frenzy is a side of the story we tend to see less: the voices of the hundreds of people who silently bleed from every stab wound inflicted. Jessica Plummer, whose son was stabbed to death in 2015; Martin Griffiths, a trauma surgeon at the Royal London Hospital; Jacob*, who used to carry a knife himself; and Graeme Halleron, a Met Police officer working in violence prevention — all of their lives are a reminder of the infinite and devastating diameter of a knife. Read the full article: https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/knife-crime-london-youth-violence-police-b1147949.html Subscribe to the Evening Standard: https://bit.ly/Subscribe-to-Evening-Standard for latest breaking news from the UK, US and around the world, plus podcasts and features. Evening Standard on socials: Check out our full video catalog: null Videos, daily editorial and more: https://www.standard.co.uk/ Like us on Facebook: https://www.fb.com/eveningstandard Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/eveningstandard and Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/evening.standard