I wouldnt expect you to have faced a 7yr penalty in the days of your youth.
Oh yes of course Stoner………..it was all hippy love and flowers and stuff.
Or perhaps ………….. the media, in the form of tabloid rags such as the Sun and the Mail, hadn't got round to cranking up mass hysteria over the knife crime 'epidemic'. Maybe they were too obsessed with mods and rockers fighting, or football hooligans, or muggings.
Yes …… "muggings" that's the one I remember best. Throughout the 70s, according to the press, you couldn't walk more than a few hundred metres down an urban street without getting mugged. And of course all muggers were black. So the police, sensitive to the needs of society, launched Operation Swamp 81, which culminated in the Brixton Riots. Strangely enough, although the Brixton Riots resulted in the hated "sus" law being scrapped, muggings seemed to drop out of the headlines soon after that……..obviously the press found other 'topics' to sink their teeth into.
Here's an interesting article :
Is knife crime really increasing?
Quote :
Doug Sharp, professor of criminal justice at Birmingham City University, said, "In terms of the prevalence of knife crime, we do know anecdotally and from research in respect of young people and gangs in certain parts of the UK, knives have been a problem for many, many years.
"The use of knives and their use by violent men goes back to the turn of the 20th Century."
BBC Home Editor Mark Easton said that in Manchester and Liverpool, according to hospital figures, gunshot wounds were a bigger problem than stabbings.
He said no child in the whole of south-east of England – outside London – was treated for stab wounds in hospital last year, and juvenile violence seemed to be a predominantly urban problem.
Prof Sharp said 20 years ago people in Birmingham, Manchester or Liverpool would not have found about about knife crimes in London – and vice versa.
"News took longer to get into the public domain and tended to have different focus," he said.