Knife Crime Hysteria?

There’s an old newspaper adage that “If it bleeds, it leads” that helps explain the current obsession with knife crime. But there’s another old truth that it would be useful to remember: news, almost by definition, is defined by what is rare and unusual, not what is common. The more coverage an event or pattern receives, the more exceptional it is likely to be.

There was a knife crime “summit” at the Scottish parliament today at which John Muir, whose son Damian was stabbed to death in Greenock in 2007, called for mandatory jail sentences for anyone caught carrying a knife:

Mr Muir, 69, said his son’s death was one of “the shameful violent statistics which have blighted the Scottish nation for decades”.  And he claimed there had been “a very nearly criminal institutional failure” to tackle the problem of knife crime. He added: “That failure is borne by the frequency of the disgraceful statistics which shame Scotland.