Analysis: Practice - Personal Safety - Knife amnesty should reachall young people

Knife-related deaths of school children, such as 15-year-old Kiyan Prince in Edgware, northwest London, two weeks ago, are guaranteed to get high-profile media coverage. It starkly puts in focus a Home Office-led national knife amnesty, which started on 24 May and will run until 30 June (YPN, 24-30 May, p2), with the slogan "Turn your knife in before someone turns it on you".

Frances Lawrence, who founded the Philip Lawrence Awards after her headmaster husband was fatally stabbed outside his school in 1995, says: "On its own a knife amnesty is not a solution to knife crime, but it can focus people's minds on the issue." Lawrence says that a lot of young people are not aware of the penalties for carrying knives, and that positive role models would help combat negative influences. "Young people today are growing up in the shadow of the Iraq war and images of violence on TV could breed acceptance of carrying knives," she says. "Bush and Blair are role models for us but their foreign policies are killing lots of people, so we have to think about the global influences on young people."