{"id":395359,"date":"2019-02-06T19:28:14","date_gmt":"2019-02-06T18:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/sharp-manias-knife-crime-in-london\/"},"modified":"2019-02-06T19:28:14","modified_gmt":"2019-02-06T18:28:14","slug":"sharp-manias-knife-crime-in-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/sharp-manias-knife-crime-in-london\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharp Manias: Knife Crime in London"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><em>London \u2014 <\/em>A bleak London assailed by daily news about Brexit negotiation, prospects of food shortages and higher prices in the event of a no-deal with the European Union, provides the perfect apocalyptic backdrop for headlines. The city is ailing; the residents are panicked; and the authorities are gloomy.<\/p>\n<p>Such environments are ideal for talk about emergencies.\u00a0 One doing much filling on London airtime is that of knife crime.\u00a0 Not that knife crime, in and of, itself is unusual: for years, stabbing implements have made their way into broader law and order issues in the city\u2019s policing scene, a good number featuring errant youth.\u00a0 These have encouraged a wide array of myths masquerading as solid fact: London, the city of the \u201cno-go\u201d area; Londonistan, city of perpetual, spiralling crime.<\/p>\n<p>In 2008, Britain\u2019s public institutions \u2013 political and public \u2013 became darkly enraptured with knife crime afflicting inner city areas, with a heavy focus on London.\u00a0 Stabbings were reported in lurid fashion; threats to urban safety were emphasised.\u00a0 As Peter Squires noted in a fairly withering <a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1057\/bp.2008.40\">examination<\/a> of the phenomenon in <em>British Politics<\/em>, \u201cThe knife crime \u2018epidemic\u2019, as it came to be called, coincided with a series of youth justice policy measures being rolled out by the government, and significantly influenced them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Kevin Marsh of the BBC, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/blogs\/theeditors\/2008\/07\/moral_panic.html\">writing<\/a> at the same time, wondered how best a news organisation might report such crime figures. \u201cHow much does&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/2019\/02\/sharp-manias-knife-crime-in-london\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>London \u2014 A bleak London assailed by daily news about Brexit negotiation, prospects of food shortages and higher prices in the event of a no-deal with the European Union, provides the perfect apocalyptic backdrop for headlines. The city is ailing; the residents are panicked; and the authorities are gloomy. Such environments are ideal for talk [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2525,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-395359","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2525"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395359\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}