Knife crime is emerging as a very important social problem in the UK. Though the Government and their agencies are trying desperately to promote the statistical figures that knife crime is going down, the public perception about the crime is totally different from these government figures. It has been mentioned in the website http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/13/ukcrime.boris that the Metropolitan police have claimed that knife crime has gone down by 15.22% with the number of incidents dropping from 12,122 to 10,220. It has been stated in the above website that still there is a knife crime every 52 minutes and in terms of numbers, it is four times that of gun crimes. A survey done by Youth Justice Board stated in the above website has mentioned that number of teenagers carrying knives has increased by 12% since 2002, with girls carrying knives increasing dramatically from 15% in 2004 to 21% in 2005.
The participants in the research concluded that knife crime existed in the society and it has only gone up drastically over the past few years. They also feel that lack of parental supervision was not a factor for increase in knife crime. It has been seen that many young people having good parental support are carrying knives. The research shows that these people have started carrying knives under the influence of media. They feel that media has over glorified the situation so much that young people feel it is glamorous to carry a knife.
Interestingly, participants feel that a knife crime happens when the person is under the influence of alcohol and TV programs and violent movies are not to be blamed for knife crime. Though some participant feels that white people are more concerned about the increase in knife crime, some disagree to this fact and confirm their views that black families are also concerned about the problem.
The research also shows that people are very much aware about the problem and many of them feel that terrible poverty and a feeling of deprivation are gaining high among the youth in London. This is the main reason for which knife crime in increasing in UK. The research shows that due to this reason, some participants feel that tougher laws and regulations is not the solution to the problem. Another point which has been mentioned in the survey is that knife crime is more in some areas, where these people operate as a gang. So, there needs to be regular police raids in those areas. It has also been founded in the research that people feel students should be discouraged and from the school level, it is necessary to explain the harmful consequences of knife crime. Research shows that people feel that it is the Government’s duty to treat this problem as a community one.
Research shows that some people feel that if the condition of these youth can be improved by giving them proper education and job, the problem can be solved quite easily.
The survey was done using Q methodology method because a qualitative analysis was the primary aim of the research. It has been stated in the website http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00AEIs that “Fundamentally, Q methodology provides a foundation for the systematic study of subjectivity, and it is this central feature that recommends it to persons interested in
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qualitative aspects of human behavior.” The aim of the research was to reach a subjective conclusion to the problem. The quantitative analysis was not the main objective. Q methodology is mainly used for summative evaluation. It is done at the end of the project and helps to assess effectiveness and helps to think about the improvements of the future. This has been mentioned in the website http://www.seri-us.org/pubs/QMethodGuidance.pdf . It has been mentioned in the above website that the biggest advantage of Q methodology is that each individual participant can express their views in length and in consistent manner. It has been mentioned in http://etd.unisa.ac.za/ETD-db/theses/available/etd-09232005-135754/unrestricted/05chapter5.pdf that the Q methodology gives a clear impression about the participants towards a certain topic.
Since the participants become actively involved in the survey, data collected is highly reliable with missing data, like undecided responses simply do not exist. The sorting process in case of Q methodology is done in presence of researcher, and hence he or she becomes more familiar to the views expressed by the participants. Q methodology was used in this research, as the aim was to judge the public perception of knife crime. The aim was not to measure the exact percentage of the crime, but to do a subjective evaluation of the same. It is also less expensive as the number of participants are few in this methodology. All this has been mentioned in http://etd.unisa.ac.za/ETD-db/theses/available/etd-09232005-135754/unrestricted/05chapter5.pdf.
There are also certain limitations of Q methodology. One of the main limitation is that it is very time consuming. Before the survey starts, both the method and instructions would have to be explained to participants, as most of them are not familiar to the process. This fact has been mentioned in http://etd.unisa.ac.za/ETD-db/theses/available/etd-09232005-135754/unrestricted/05chapter5.pdf. To quote from the above mentioned website, “ Validity can therefore be affected if the participant’s lack of comprehension leads to misrepresentation.”
Another limitation of the Q methodology is that it uses a very small sample size. Sometimes, the size is so small that it cannot be considered to be the general opinion of the rest of the population. Gender identity was seen to be a very important factor while doing the survey. Factors responsible for growing knife crime was very much different described by men and women. Thus the need arose for doing the survey by Q methodology.
Though many knife crimes are happening quite frequently in the UK for the past few years, a knife crime moral panic type has been created in the society by sensational journalistic coverage of those incidents. The victims of this crime are not the adults, but teenagers between the ages 10 to 18. Young people are getting killed not by others, but only by themselves. The problem is more of a social and community one as young people are facing unemployment, feeling of being deprived and have fallen out of the educational net. So, a better youth services plan is necessary to solve this problem. These youths should be handled with care and if possible brought back to the educational net. An initiative can be taken at the school level explaining the youth about the consequences of the knife crime.
It is now the role of the Government to launch a massive Youth Services program and eliminate the ‘deprived’ status from their minds.
