Justice has not been served, according to the families of the three people stabbed to death by Valdo Calocane last summer – Grace O’Malley-Kumar, Barnaby Webber and Ian Coates. It is hard to disagree; Calocane may have been sentenced last week to indefinite detention in a secure hospital as a result of his paranoid schizophrenia, but there remain many unanswered questions about why a man known to the authorities, clearly dangerous to the community and capable of this level of premeditated attack was able to commit these horrific crimes, leaving three grieving families and other victims with life-changing injuries.
There were many missed opportunities to thwart Calocane. He had been known to mental health services since 2020, after he was sectioned and hospitalised following violent episodes. His family tried to raise concerns about his health and behaviour the following year; and after a search warrant was eventually issued, months’ worth of unused medication was found at his home. There were documented instances of him engaging in violence, not least the assault of a police officer in September 2021. When he failed to appear in court a year later, a warrant was issued for his arrest that was still outstanding when he killed O’Malley-Kumar, Webber and Coates. There must be a multi-agency inquiry to understand how Calocane could slip through the net for so long, akin to the serious case reviews carried out when a child has died as a result of suspected abuse or neglect.
Calocane’s killings have also prompted an important broader debate about how to tackle levels of knife crime that have again started to rise following a drop during the pandemic. Street knife crime is an issue that blights young lives, often but not always gang-related. Self-reported weapon carrying peaks at age 15 and, unsurprisingly, young men are more likely to carry weapons than young women. One in six children aged between 13 and 17 reported being victims of violence at the end of last year, and one in seven that they had committed an act of violence, with one in 25 saying they had carried a weapon. A much broader group of children is affected by violence – around half say that violence, or the fear of violence, affects their day-to-day lives.
It is gravely worrying that violence should shape so many young people’s lives in this way. The temptation is to try to alight on a quick fix. Hence the government, which had previously introduced a ban on carrying so-called zombie knives and committed to make the possession of those knives illegal, last week announced it would close an important loophole on this ban. This is an overdue measure, but does nothing to address the fact that weapons which can kill can be bought as cutlery or found in kitchen drawers. Others have suggested that even first-time knife possession should attract a mandatory prison sentence.
But as actor Idris Elba has warned, such a measure is likely to draw more young people into further criminality – custodial sentences for young people are associated with high levels of reoffending – while doing little to deter them from carrying knives. Research suggests that young people carry knives sometimes for status, sometimes because they fear attack from their peers, and sometimes because they are coerced into it, for example if they are exploited into county lines gangs.
Glasgow’s experience shows what is possible with resources and local leadership. In the early 2000s, the city had a reputation as one of the murder capitals of Europe but, from 2008, two police officers implemented a US-based approach called focused deterrence, which identifies the young people most involved in violence and offers them intensive support to stop, and uses swift enforcement action if they choose not to engage. This approach, which involves changes to policing and increasing support services for young people at risk of violence, has been associated with a significant drop in knife-carrying and violent crime – although, as we report this week, progress has slowed in the wake of the pandemic.
Knife crime among young people can be successfully reduced but the evidence shows that it requires many approaches: so-called hot-spots policing to ensure a visible police presence in areas where knives are more common; talking therapy for young people at risk of violence; structured extra-curricular activities such as sports; and targeted programmes to help younger children manage their emotions and behaviour. Labour’s pledge last week to introduce a more holistic approach suggests that it understands this.
While the conversation about reducing knife crime on our streets is critical to the welfare of young people, so is reducing the use of knives in abusive relationships behind closed doors. Too many women and children are killed by men in the home: analysis by the Femicide Census shows that, between 2009 and 2023, 445 women were killed by their male intimate partner with a knife or sharp object involved.
Knives may not be as lethal as guns in terms of their potential to kill, but they are harder to regulate. Reducing knife crime therefore has to go beyond measures to regulate the possession and use of knives as weapons. It rests on preventing domestic abuse and tackling the risk factors that drive young people towards violence, both so important in eliminating homicide altogether.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk
