‘Not all kitchen knives need a point on them’

Prohibiting the sale of zombies knives is a positive step, but schools must intervene before to help address the crime of the United Kingdom’s knife, says Idris Elba.

The 52 -year -old actor has spent the last year making a documentary for the BBC on the solutions to the crime of knife, during which he met with the families of the victims, the police officers and the adolescent criminals.

In addition to the early intervention, he told the BBC that ninja swords should be prohibited and even suggest that domestic knives could become less dangerous.

“Not all kitchen knives need to have a point on them, that sounds like a crazy to say,” he adds, “but you can still cut your food without the point in your knife, which is an innovative way to see it.”

A total of 507 children were treated in English hospitals for knife injuries in the 12 months until April 2024, according to the latest figures analyzed by the Endowment Youth (YEF) fund.

“I have three children,” says Elba. “As a father, that is always going through your mind.”

In the documentary, called Idris Elba: our crime of crime with a knife, the Hollywood star meets a 17 -year -old boy in the institution of young Feltham criminals who began to wear a sword when he was 13 years old.

He grew up in a violent home and had been intimidated at school for having the dandruff.

“I looked around and I saw that the only people who are not being intimidated are the people who are in this way,” the teenager tells Elba, “so I felt the need to become that person.”

When Elba asked him how that made him feel, the child says: “When I had a knife I felt that I could do anything, as if it were a God, nobody could touch me.”

“It makes you the bad man in the situation. Then, the thrust comes to push and you end up using it.”

He stabbed someone and spent a couple of months after his sentence for serious bodily damage when Elba met him.

Yef figures, a charity organization that uses government funds to help prevent children from getting involved in violence, show that knife crime remains a persistent problem for young people.

Elba says that, while the Ban zombies knives implemented last September It was “a massive step in the right direction”, the country is still in a crisis.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said last week, after the sentence of the adolescent who murdered three girls in Southport, that the The government would bring more difficult checks for people trying to buy knives online.

Elba believes that more attention should be paid to children in their pre and early teenagers, with disciplinary actions such as school exclusions, used as an opportunity to intervene in the life of a young person.

“When a small child is excluded, they are more likely to go to a dark place,” he says, but adds: “There are indicators of hope. There are intervention schemes that really work and that nobody really knows about”

Jayden, 16, is a beneficiary.

He started carrying a knife when he was 12 years after a group of 20 children began with him in a park in Coventry. One gave him an ax.

“Since then I did not come out without a knife,” he tells the documentary. “You’re going to be afraid after that, right? … you will want to protect yourself in some way and that was the only way I could think.”

Finally, he was referred to the community initiative to reduce violence (CIRV), which is operated by the West Midlands police.

They identify adolescents who could commit or become victims of knife crime and intervene before stabbing takes place.

Then they find education and professional opportunities that adapt to each individual.

They looked for Jayden since there were concerns that he was involved in gang activities and carrying a knife. He had been excluded from school several times and expelled from his family home.

He was diagnosed with autism and ADHD. Through CIRV, Jayden joined a football academy and now aspires to be a coach.

He has stopped carrying a knife, but says that the dangers remain.

“It is still quite normal where I am to see someone wearing a blade on them,” he says. “They almost took me two about me this week.”

He paid tribute to the PC Laura Cuthbertson, who has lied it as part of CIRV, although the financing of the scheme is exhausted in six months.

According to the Ministry of Justice, inmates with the highest recidivism rate are between 10 and 17 years old.

The scheme costs £ 1,500 per child every year and Elba wants more funds for initiatives such as this, involved in the life of a child before committing a crime.

“There must be a very radical look where we spend our money,” he says. “How we spend our money, what are the effective solutions against which we are wasting a lot of money in which they are not effective.”

Jayden tells Elba when he joined CIRV for the first time that he had no confidence in himself and was scared.

“I value life much more,” he says. “There is some beauty in the world for me, that was not there before.”

Diana Johnson, Minister of Police Prevention, Fire and Crime, says that the government has already banned zombies knives and was progressing with a “ninja” sword prohibition.

“In the long term, we must ensure that the correct prevention systems are instead to stop the crime on their ways.”