KNIFE crime is soaring among youngsters because brutal video games that reward players for murder, rape and theft have made violence seem acceptable, the state's top cop said yesterday.

Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione believes young people are being desensitised by spending hours acting out deadly scenarios on their computer screens.

"The thing that's concerning me is the prevalence of people who are at this stage not just prepared to carry a knife, but prepared to use it," Mr Scipione said.

"That has increased significantly."

He said he had reached the conclusion that there was "nothing more potentially damaging than the sort of violence they're being exposed to, be it in movies, be it in console games they're playing."

"How can it not affect you if you're a young adolescent growing up in an era where to be violent is almost praiseworthy, where you engage in virtual crime on a daily basis and many of these young people (do) for hours and hours on end," he said.

"You get rewarded for killing people, raping women, stealing money from prostitutes, driving cars crashing and killing people.

"That's not going to affect the vast majority but it's only got to affect one or two and what have you got? You've got some potentially really disturbed young person out there who's got access to weapons like knives or is good with the fist, can go out there and almost live that life now in the streets of modern Australia. That's concerning."

Mr Scipione's comments come after a spate of stabbings involving youths over the past month, which have seen teenagers killed, wounded and arrested.

Crime involving adolescents had become a major concern, particularly when they were fuelled by alcohol. And part of the problem was the disinterest shown by their parents.

"Don't underestimate the problems that we're having with young people who aren't bound by the licensing laws because they shouldn't be getting into licensed premises to begin with," he said.

"They're coming in preloaded. They go and get plastered and then they want to fight the world.

"We grab them off the streets, children 14-13, who are drunk that we come across in the city in the Cross and in Oxford St.

"We ring parents and say 'little Johnny's down here, you better come in and get him'. And parents don't even care. They say 'he got there and can get his way back'." He said he opposed moves by the Juvenile Justice Department, revealed in The Daily Telegraph last week, to soften the laws around juveniles.

Attorney-General Greg Smith's department has submitted to Mr Smith's review of the Young Offenders Act that crimes like robbery in company, indecent assault and serious break and enters should be placed under the auspices of the Act, meaning youths might receive a caution or be sent to youth conferencing, rather than be dealt with by the Children's Court.

Originally published as Video games incite kids to crime