Young people who carry knives will be made to visit hospitals where stabbing victims are treated, in a bid to shock them into changing their behaviour
Mrs Smith’s proposals will see young people caught carrying knives being made to go to accident and emergency wards, to see the consequences of stabbings
BBC, Shock tactics for knife carriers
Imagine how the Home Secretary’s plan might work.
Young Dwayne is found to be carrying a knife. Currently, Dwayne might be given a police caution, which is a serious telling off,
(BBC, What if I’m caught carrying a knife?.
At the time of his serious telling off the police might be lucky, and happen to know that the local hospital’s A&E department have a fresh knifing victim to hand – perhaps they’ll be kept informed about new stabbings as they arrive in Casualty – and they might wish to take Dwayne straight along to see what a knife wound looks like. As the police haven’t arrested Dwayne, they will have no powers to detain him or to oblige him to hop into their car. He won’t have to go with them and unless he is peculiarly interested in wounds, he won’t bother.
If there aren’t any conveniently bleeding victims available just at the time Dwayne’s been stopped, they’ll have to take his details and then get in touch with him as soon as the hospital contacts them to tell them another young knife victim has been brought in. Then, the police could phone Dwayne on his mobile and, hoping he’s sober and undrugged, persuade him to come with them to the hospital.
There’ll be more people like Dwayne, found to be carrying knives, than there will be people who have been stabbed, so there’ll probably be quite a few young hoodlums like Dwayne to be rounded up. The police will need to take out the station minibus, if they’re able to persuade anyone to agree to the outing.
Dwayne and the others – he’ll probably know quite a few of them, as they’ll all be around the same age and from the same area – won’t be the most organised of people so even if they agree to pop along to the hospital with the police, it’ll take quite a time for the collection of hoodlums, chavs, gangstas an ne’er-do-wells to be collected by the minibus.
Eventually the party will turn up at the hospital – and then what? By this time the victim, if he’s alive, will have been sewn-up and drugged-up and put to bed; the doctors and nurses will have moved on to the next cases; the sick and injured already there, queuing to be examined, surely won’t be too pleased to see this gang arrive in the waiting room.
This is only part of Jacqui Smith’s response to the public concern about knife crime. you can be certain the rest of her proposals will be just as stupid and unfeasible.