July 21, 2008	Monday	Rajab 17, 1429

LONDON: Britain is struggling to get to grips with a surge of fatal knife attacks, which analysts say reflects a growing sense of insecurity on the country’s streets.

While some say young people are increasingly carrying knives as a fashion item, others say it is simply because they are scared of being attacked and so make sure they are armed.

On Friday, police confirmed the death of an 18-year-old in south London, the 21st teenager to die of violence in the British capital this year, amid wider concerns about anti-social behaviour among young people on the streets.

That came after nine people were killed across the country the previous week, including six in only 24 hours.

“We have seen the emergence of a worrying trend in relation to knife crime,” said Scotland Yard’s Deputy Assistant Commissioner Alf Hitchcock.

“We see both an intensification in the severity of offending, and a worrying change in the age profile of offenders and victims, which has decreased from mid- to late-teens to early 20s down to early to mid-teens,” he added.

Analysts say young people appear to be increasingly worried about their own safety, although Home Office statistics released on Thursday showed a nine per cent fall in overall crime in England and Wales in the year to March 2008.

“They fear they’re going to be attacked themselves,” said Professor Gloria Laycock, from the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science, named after a well-known BBC television presenter who was shot dead on her doorstep in 1999.

“I don’t think it’s got anything to do with some fundamental social cause like the economy, or poor parenting or anything like that, because it’s happened too quickly,” she added.

According to a 2006 study compiled for the Home Office, 85 per cent of young people who had carried a knife said they did so to protect themselves, while 42 per cent of young victims of assault went on to commit an attack themselves.—AFP