A schedule for phasing-out knife crime

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Abstract

Knife crime has become a prominent and seemingly intractable problem in England & Wales. Theory and evidence indicate that reducing crime opportunities is an effective means of crime control, including restrictions on lethal weapons. While public debate has centred on zombie and other ‘status’ knives, the most prevalent homicide weapon is a kitchen knife. Here we argue that replacing lethal pointed-tip kitchen knives with safer round-tip knives would reduce knife crime with little or no displacement. Drawing on the approach to remove fossil-fuel vehicles from roads, we propose a phased removal of lethal kitchen knives that we estimate will cut knife-related homicide in half, reduce other knife crime and criminality, and prevent thousands of non-criminal knife-related injuries.

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Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Farrell, G. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3987-8457 Davies, T.
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2024. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Dates:	Published: 19 December 2024 Published (online): 19 December 2024 Accepted: 25 November 2024
Institution:	The University of Leeds
Academic Units:	The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Law (Leeds)
Funding Information:	Funder Grant number RCUK (Research Councils UK) ES/V00445X/1 ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) ES/L014971/1
Depositing User:	Symplectic Publications
Date Deposited:	02 Jan 2025 13:43
Last Modified:	05 Feb 2025 14:27
Published Version:	https://crimesciencejournal.biomedcentral.com/arti...
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Springer
Identification Number:	10.1186/s40163-024-00241-7
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:221111

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A schedule for phasing-out knife crime. (deposited 06 Dec 2024 11:40)
- A schedule for phasing-out knife crime. (deposited 02 Jan 2025 13:43) [Currently Displayed]

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A schedule for phasing-out knife crime

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