‘Gang stabbings filling hospitals’
The number of people admitted to hospital with stab injuries has shot up by nearly a third since Labour came to power, MPs heard yesterday.
At one hospital the amount of seriously injured stab victims has more than quadrupled in the last five years, the Home Affairs Select Committee was told.
Crime experts and a doctor treating stab victims linked the increase to the rise in gang-related violence between youngsters.
In evidence to the committee, Professor Karim Brohi, a trauma surgeon at Barts and the London NHS Trust, said much territorial conflict was based on schools or postcode areas.
In 2003 his hospital trust, which deals with a quarter of London’s trauma injuries, admitted 68 people for serious knife injuries. In 2006 the figure was 258 and this year it is expected to hit 278.
The increase in young victims treated for serious stab wounds has also risen dramatically.
They tend not to be alcohol related but related to school groups or local gangs
Only nine under-20s were treated in 2003, compared to 71 this year, when the youngest patient was 13.
“The change we are seeing is really in the teenage group,” he said. “They tend not to be alcohol related but related to school groups or local gangs.”
Dr Bob Golding, crime lecturer at the University of Portsmouth and former assistant chief constable of Warwickshire, told the committee that convictions for carrying a knife has nearly doubled in the 10 years from 1997.
He said: “All major conurbations have at least one example of a gang. The context is gangs and the context is the proliferation of violence which was not the case before.”
