LONDON – A boy, 7, threatens to "knife" a pregnant school teacher. Two high school students from opposite ends of the country, both 17, die in violent stabbings hours apart. After five separate knife attacks over four days in one area of Britain’s capital city, a 45-year-old woman's spinal cord is severed, leaving her paralyzed.

Knife-related homicides took 285 lives in England and Wales from March 2017 to March 2018 – a record since data collection began in 1946. The data from the Office for National Statistics doesn't include Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Unlike the USA, where guns are tied to many deaths, only 4% of homicides here last year were from shootings; 39% were from "sharp instruments," the top weapon.

Police leaders, youth workers and victims' families called for action over what Prime Minister Theresa May described as a public health emergency and a "cancer" affecting British society: violence by its youth.

The "pervasive horror of knife crime" must end, said Charles, prince of Wales, in his Easter message.

"It's getting worse, and I don't believe we've reached the peak," said Caroline Shearer, whose son Jay was fatally stabbed in 2012 at age 17.

Shearer runs Only Cowards Carry, an organization that teaches school kids about the grim physical realities of knife crime, from organ failure to macabre forensics, as part of an effort to prevent others from dying in similar circumstances.

"I was quite naive before my son was murdered. I believed that stabbings only occurred if drugs or gangs were involved," she said. Jay was killed by a vegetable knife at a private party. He was celebrating his exam results.

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Campaigners and academics have different explanations for what has caused the increase in knife crime when, official data shows, violent crime in Britain overall has fallen by about a quarter since 2013.

Some blame socioeconomic factors, specifically cuts to public spending that reduced the reach of welfare programs that provide mental health services.

Others say the pervasive use of social media encourages copycat-like incidents. Still others point to fewer police on the streets, although May insists there is "no direct correlation" between a fall in police numbers and rising knife crime.

"We cannot simply arrest ourselves out of this problem," Britain's leader said this month during a summit on youth violence.

The number of incidents recorded by police on Britain's streets involving knives or sharp instruments is increasing – to 40,829 last year, a rise of 6 percent.

At least 40 people have been fatally stabbed in Britain in 2019. They came from all kinds of backgrounds, and at least 10 were teenagers, although the majority of homicide victims were from the 18- to 24-year-old group. Males are most affected.

Jodie Chesney was an enthusiastic Explorer Scout. Yousef Makki wanted to be a surgeon. The two 17-year-olds were stabbed to death on the same weekend in different parts of England.

The youngest victim, Jaden Moodie, 14, was pushed off a scooter and stabbed to death. Police said it was a targeted attack.

"This kind of phenomenon often seems to want to avoid being pinned down to cause and effect" said David Wilson, a criminologist at England's Birmingham City University. "What's clear is that lots of young men, in disproportionate numbers to what we've previously experienced, are being attacked, wounded and, in many cases, killed."

Stephen Addison, a former gang member and the founder of BoxUp Crime, an organization that works with inner city kids to combat youth crime and violence through boxing training, said he believes the real problem is Britain has a generation of young people who "don't have purpose, who haven't connected to purpose."

"When you haven't connected to purpose, your time becomes limitless, and you do things without a concept of time, you make mistakes without a concept of time, you make decisions without a concept of time. A lot of kids are selling drugs, going to prison, coming out, stabbing people, going back to jail – all without a concept of time," said Addison, 28, who is exploring bringing BoxUp Crime to Los Angeles and New York City.

"The second young people connect with purpose, their time becomes limited. Then they start thinking: 'OK, I've only got a certain amount of time to do this, to box and make it to the Olympics or to set up a business.' We need to give these kids a sense of purpose."

Addison turned his life around – found his purpose – at age 20 after he had a dream he was going to go to prison for murder. "I am lucky to be doing what I'm doing," he said, adding that a lot of the friends he grew up with are either in prison or dead.

In December, Addison was awarded the British Empire Medal by Queen Elizabeth II for helping to change the lives of more than 4,000 young kids.

The rise in knife attacks in Britain – from 2011 and 2018, the number of crimes involving a "sharp instrument" has increased by almost a quarter – may be misleading for an American audience. Despite rhetoric from President Donald Trump that singled out Britain's knife issues, there is no place in Britain where it is as dangerous for a teenager, from a homicide perspective, as in the USA.

"I recently read a story that in London, which has unbelievably tough gun laws, a once very prestigious hospital, right in the middle, is like a war zone for horrible stabbing wounds," Trump said last year while addressing a meeting of the National Rifle Association, which campaigns for Americans' right to bear arms.

"Yes, that's right, they don't have guns, they have knives, and instead there's blood all over the floors of this hospital," Trump said. "Knives, knives, knives."

In the USA, 10,982 people were murdered in cases involving firearms in 2017 (the most recent period for which data was available), according to the FBI. In Britain, over the same period, there were 32.

After a mass shooting at a school in 1996, Britain pursued legislative bans on assault rifles and handguns and tightened background checks for other types of firearms.

Homicide rates:Gun violence rare in UK compared with USA

"Whether it's gun violence or knife violence, the best way to manage it is to select and recruit people who have access and trust by the people who are committing the violence to interrupt the spread. That stops the 'epidemic,' " said Gary Slutkin, a physician and professor of epidemiology at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Slutkin has advocated treating violence, whether in the community, mass terrorism or hate crimes, as a contagious disease that needs to be managed like other public health threats. He developed his theory – that violence clusters, self-replicates and penetrates vulnerable communities like a contagious illness such as Ebola – while helping to fight infectious diseases when we worked for the World Health Organization in Africa.

Central to the idea is the use of "Violence Interrupters," former gang members usually, who can intervene in petty disputes before they escalate and help educate and steer active gang members away from violence.

"The police can't do it on their own," Slutkin said. "You need to treat it like an epidemic to get rid of it."

Cure Violence, the project Slutkin established to implement his idea, has been used by more than 50 communities in the USA and in dozens of countries from El Salvador to Syria.

Glasgow, Scotland, used to have the highest murder rate of any city in Western Europe. Since adopting Slutkin's public heath approach to violence, murders have fallen. Mayor Sadiq Khan is exploring similar initiatives for London.

"It's quite incredible how when you speak to these youngsters, how matter of fact they are about knife crime," said Henry Smith, who founded Wickers Charity to help stop violent youth crime in east London after his brother-in-law was fatally stabbed outside an Indian restaurant two decades ago.

"It's not all of them, but they readily admit they carry knives, expect to be in fights and even stab people. They grow up with it," he said.

Shearer, whose son Jay was stabbed to death seven years ago, said she "took heart" from increased visibility around knife crime issues in Britain. "The more time we take to solve this, the more deaths there will be," she warned.

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