Content uploaded by Manu Manthri Savani
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Manu Manthri Savani on Jul 17, 2024
Content may be subject to copyright.
Austerity and Knife Crime in London:
The Role of Public Spending Cuts and Welfare Reforms
Working Paper
Mr Ben Jeffery
Affiliated with University College London, benedict.jeffery@outlook.com
Dr Manu Savani (corresponding author)
Dept of Social and Political Sciences
Brunel University London, manu.savani@brunel.ac.uk
Abstract
Is public sector austerity associated with higher knife crime? In-depth interviews with
youth work and youth offending professionals suggests two potential pathways by which
the austerity agenda can impact individuals and communities: public sector reforms and
welfare policy reforms. The framework is tested with data from 32 London boroughs over
2017-20. We find support for the welfare reform pathway. Greater reliance on Universal
Credit and greater experience of capped Housing Benefit are both associated with higher
knife crime incidence at the borough level. We are not able to triangulate support for the
theorised pathway on public services. Our findings draw attention to spillover effects of
austerity policies on crime outcomes, and emphasise the importance of institutional
context for understanding knife crime.
Key words: austerity, knife crime, London, mixed methods, welfare
1
1. Introduction
A generation of young people have spent their formative years growing up in
‘austerity Britain’, which began with the Coalition Government’s agenda of public sector
spending cuts and reforms (2010-15) and continued through the Conservative
Governments since 2015. Knife crime is any crime “involving an object with a blade or
sharp instrument” (Allen and Kirk Wade, 2020: 5). Links have been suggested between
austerity and knife crime in the UK, particularly regarding spending cuts and policing
presence on the streets (Home Affairs Committee, 2018, p. 6). Previous programmes
designed to tackle knife crime, however, found success in the public health approach, by
focusing on home stability, public support and opportunities to escape deprivation
(Torjesen, 2018). This suggests a broader explanation of not just policing, but welfare and
public sector policy, for knife crime.
The impact of the UK’s austerity agenda on young people and disadvantaged
communities has been significant, and can be viewed through the lens of two distinct areas
of reform: welfare policy and public sector administration. Reporting by the UN found
that welfare changes, particularly with the introduction of Universal Credit, have led to
increases in child and in-work poverty, whilst public sector reform has seen children’s
clubs closing and preventative housing services losing funding (Alston, 2019). Prior
research has considered a number of adverse outcomes from austerity policies, including
food insecurity (Loopstra et al., 2015), homelessness (Fitzpatrick et al., 2019), and
mortality (Watkins et al., 2017). A parallel literature on crime has considered how
institutional context and wider economic policy might relate to criminal behaviour
(Farrall, Gray and Mike Jones, 2020), youth offending (Haines and Case, 2018), and knife
crime in London (Roberts, 2019).
Our study seeks to bridge these largely separate bodies of research, by exploring
the role that public sector cuts and welfare reforms have played in the growing incidence
of knife crime. We use a mixed methods research design to analyse the consequences of
the austerity policy agenda for communities and individuals, and trace pathways between
these consequences and the potential motivations behind knife crime. We focus on
London, the so-called ‘knife crime capital’ of the UK. London registered 14,843 separate
incidents of knife crime in 2019/20; and the highest rate of offences involving a sharp
2
instrument (179 per 100,000 people) across England and Wales (Allen G. and Kirk-Wade
E., 2020).
This article makes two contributions. First, we develop a theoretical framework
drawing on in-depth interviews with front-line workers in London. The framework
proposes two causal pathways from austerity, as a macro-level policy agenda, to
community level conditions, and through to individual behaviours that are associated with
knife crime outcomes. Secondly, we offer a statistical test of the two pathways using data
from 32 London boroughs. Our results indicate support for the welfare reform pathway,
drawing on Universal Credit and Housing Benefit data, which are found to be statistically
significantly associated with knife crime incidence. We find no support for the public
services pathway using spending data on young people and youth justice.
In the next section we review what is known about austerity and its impacts on
communities and individuals; and the literature on knife crime. We also examine how
prior research has investigated the relationship between austerity and knife crime, and
highlight where the gaps in existing research are. Section 3 presents the first step of our
mixed methods research design, drawing on qualitative data and analysis to explore the
potential causal pathways from austerity policies to knife crime. Section 4 presents the
results of a preliminary statistical analysis. In section 5 we discuss our findings and
consider avenues for future research, and section 6 concludes with implications for policy
makers.
3
2. Literature Review
Austerity in the UK 2010-2020
Fiscal consolidation is not a new macroeconomic policy approach to address
public sector debt (Alesina and Ardagna, 1998), but is a contested one (Levitas, 2012;
Krugman, 2015). The UK, like many other European nations, faced deteriorating public
finances following the Global Financial Crisis triggered in 2008. Austerity was first
outlined as a policy response by the Coalition Government in 2010 in order to curb public
spending, and ultimately reduce the Government’s budget deficit.
Austerity in the UK had two defining features. Firstly, public service and spending
cuts, with social security a key target for reduced spending. Secondly, welfare reforms to
eligibility and administrative process, including increased use of sanctions, stricter
conditionality rules, and caps on benefit entitlement (Bach, 2016; Taylor-Gooby, Leruth
and Chung, 2017).
The decade witnessed deterioration in social outcomes in the UK. ‘Core
homelessness’ in England increased by 28%; in 2010 140,000 people were identified as
homeless on a typical night, rising to 153,000 in 2017 (Fitzpatrick et al., 2019, p. 62).
Child poverty rose from 27% (2010) to 31% (2020) (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2021)
. Austerity has been linked to adverse health outcomes such as mortality and excess deaths
in the UK (Watkins et al., 2017); and in other European nations who pursued an austerity
agenda, such as Greece (Kentikelenis et al., 2014). Research has delved into the impacts of
new welfare policies such as Universal Credit (UC), the main programme for
unemployment insurance and support to low income households. UC has been linked to
poor mental health outcomes (Wickham et al., 2020). The growing use of benefit
sanctions was linked to food insecurity (Loopstra et al., 2018), and the use of loans
(advance payments) as part of the Universal Credit rollout has been linked to a rise in
hunger (Bramley et al., 2021, p. 50).
While the scholarly consensus relates austerity policies to a range of adverse social
and health outcomes, less attention has been given to the potential links between austerity
and crime. Earlier work considered the association between youth unemployment and
4
crime (Carmichael and Ward, 2000), and reported on the potential for detrimental effects
of austerity and public sector reform on youth justice (Yates, 2012). In reality, spending
cuts for Local Authorities (LAs) in England have been keenly felt in the youth services
sector, with spending by LAs falling by 71% in real terms from £1.36bn in 2010/11 to
£398m in 2018/19 (YMCA, 2020, p. 6). One estimate of youth service cutbacks suggested
763 youth centres were closed from 2012 to 2019, and 4,544 youth worker jobs lost
(UNISON, 2018). Estimates for London imply a similar trend, with a reported net loss of
101 youth centres since 2011/12 and a net loss of 452 youth worker jobs (Berry, 2020).1
A snapshot of the latest knife crime data (Figure 1) suggests a negative relationship
between Local Authority spending on young people’s services and knife crime incidence.
While there is sometimes a presumption of cause and effect, the chart shows association
only and the literature has yet to interrogate this relationship for causal inference.
1
These estimates are caveated by the difficulty in obtaining comparable and complete data across
London boroughs, and apply only to 16 Local Authorities. They may, in that respect, be a conservative
estimate of cuts, which are not systematically recorded in official data.
5
Figure 1: Knife crime and public spending cuts in London
Notes: Knife crime data taken from Allen and Audickas (2018) and converted to a rate per 100,000
population in borough. Spending on young people by Local Authority from ONS.
London: the knife crime capital of the UK
While improvements in recording data may partly account for the increase in knife
crime numbers (ONS, 2019), there appears to have been a steady increase in incidence
from 2013/14, with a 26% increase in offences involving a knife in London over 2016-18.
In the year ending March 2020 London registered 179 offences per 100,000 population, up
from 169 in 2018/19.
Knife crime disproportionately affects young people. Over one-fifth of offenses
across England and Wales that involved a knife or offensive weapon in 2019 were among
young people aged 10-17; 16% of hospital admissions for stabbings were aged 18 or
younger, with 92% of these being male (Allen G. and Kirk-Wade E., 2020). Vulliamy et
al’s (2018) research on knife crime victims in hospitals reported that most patients were
males from deprived communities, with clear patterns relating to age: risk of attack
increased between the ages of 14 and 18, attacks were likely to take place further from
6
home and later in the day for older victims, and after-school injuries accounted for 22% of
all injuries.
Explaining knife crime
Descriptive analysis has pointed to the importance of race, age, educational status,
gender and other individual level characteristics when describing trends. Wood (2010)
points out that one-third of those killed in Greater London in 2008 were refugees or newly
arrived. A systematic review of public health and medical literature associates adverse
childhood experiences with poor mental health and youth violence (Haylock et al., 2020)
. Children who carry knives are more likely to be excluded than in school (Eades et al.,
2007, p. 21; Clement, 2010).
Other research has tried to explain the motivations behind knife crime, often
grounded in psychological theories. The act of knife-carrying has been related through
qualitative analysis to a fear of becoming a victim of crime and the perceived need for
protection (Clement, 2010, pp. 442–43); also as a way of gaining social status, and an
assertion of masculinity (Palasinski and Riggs, 2012; Palasinski et al., 2021). Recent work
suggests welfare states can affect the level of “strain” an individual feels, and this may
motivate criminal behaviours (Tiratelli, Bradford and Yesberg, 2020).
Scotland’s experiences are instructive through their apparent contrast with
austerity Britain. The public health approach aimed to support young people back into
education, training and jobs, and to provide secure housing. Making available avenues to
escape violence was linked to a reduced need for young people to carry a knife (Torjesen,
2018).
The social policy literature has underscored the connections between individual
characteristics and institutional context, and how they may combine to affect behaviours,
attitudes and motivations. Clement’s ethnographic research with young people in Bristol
draws attention to an “anti-social environment… causing them to behave in what is called
an anti-social way” (2010, p. 445). The lack of positive, or any, engagement with
secondary school created long-term problems, such as a lack of qualifications, and higher
risk of offending. Straw et al (2018) conduct interviews with refugee children in London
7
aged 12 to 17, who reported a deep distrust of public services and police partly related to
the asylum system. In her study of “the London killings of 2018”, Roberts (2019) conducts
extensive qualitative data gathering across policy stakeholders, victims and perpetrators of
knife crimes. The four issues that lie “behind the numbers”, referring to the more than 100
murders during 2018, include cuts to policing, broader austerity and its impacts, housing,
and cuts to youth services, youth offending teams, and probation services. In their study of
austerity in Europe, Stuckler et al (2017) map complex causal pathways linking austerity
to adverse social and health outcomes, testing theory with statistical analysis.
Despite the richness of the works cited here, there is a gap in our understanding of
meso-level factors – such as those at the level of the community, involving local services
and governance, which may also play a role in creating the conditions in which knife crime
occurs. Recent work by Farrall et al (2020) tries to fill this gap by looking at economic
context alongside individual factors, but simplifies economic policy to unemployment
trends. Roberts (2019) offers valuable descriptive insights, but does not advance an
explanatory model, or adjudicate between potential mechanisms linking austerity to knife
crime.
In sum, separate bodies of research have examined crime trends and the macro-
institutional contexts, and the characteristics and behaviours of individual perpetrators and
victims. What is lacking is a theoretical bridge between these two important literatures.
How might austerity affect knife crime? How can we trace the effects of a high-level
economic policy agenda to communities, families, and individual actions? In the next
section we attempt to build a richer understanding of such causal pathways.
8
3. Theory Building: Mapping the Pathways Between Austerity and Knife Crime
Outcomes
Data gathering and analysis 2
Interviews were held with front line staff in Local Authorities and the charitable
sector. Youth work specialists have insights into a wide range of youth behaviours and
attitudes (Mason, 2015), and are well-placed to discuss the policy, staffing and funding
changes that took place during the UK’s austerity years. Interviewees were approached
through convenience sampling. The four interviewees were staff working with young
people in London in different capacities: two youth workers, a manager of an anti-knife
crime charity, and the head of a youth offending service. They collectively had many years
of professional experience and first-hand knowledge of London during the 2010s. The
interviewees were able to speak about the boroughs of Kingston, Richmond, Southwark
and Tower Hamlets, covering a diverse set of borough-level experiences. Richmond and
Kingston registered two of the lowest numbers of knife crime offences; Southwark and
Tower Hamlets reported the top and sixth highest number of offences respectively (Allen
and Audickas, 2018).
A semi-structured topic guide was informed by the literature, and allowed us to
explore the degree to which knife crime was perceived as being linked to the austerity
agenda; and if so, through which policy channels. Open-ended and probe questions
allowed us to delve deeper into interviewees’ experiences and perceptions where they
touched on social, economic and organisational change during the austerity years (Hsieh
and Shannon, 2005). In this we take the approach of using interviews as part of a mixed-
methods strategy to “reveal micro-processes” that can help identify broader, causal,
relationships (Martin, 2013, p. 119). Open-ended questions allowed “respondents to
organise their answers within their own frameworks” (Aberbach and Rockman, 2002, p.
674). This approach balanced order with flexibility, and enabled us to uncover important
perceptions and information to inform our theory building. Their unique perspectives were
valuable for investigating how perceptions diverged or converged, and to what extent
common themes emerged from different professional vantage points.
2 Ethical approval was obtained through University College London (16275/001) and Brunel University
London (18876-LR-Nov/2019- 21046-2).
9
Interview transcripts were analysed by two coders using NVivo, largely applying
open coding techniques. Open coding, or conventional content analysis (Hsieh and
Shannon, 2005, p. 1279), at first allowed for themes to emerge directly from the interview
data. Initial themes were identified, grouped and organised into a preliminary framework
linking the austerity agenda as macroeconomic policy change, through to changes in
welfare policy and public sector capacity; and from these policy changes to the level of
communities and individuals. A final stage emerged from the data by associating
community and individual impacts with knife crime-related behaviours (see Figure 2). A
second coder reviewed the data with this framework and preliminary coding scheme in
place, applying a more directed coding approach and undertaking a process of
triangulation with the first coding exercise. The findings of this theory-building exercise
are presented below, organised around the key themes in Table 1.
10
Figure 2: Theory framework relating austerity policy to knife crime outcomes
Pathway 2
Welfare policy
changes
(theme 2a)
Austerity policies
Pathway 1
Public sector changes
and effects on provision
(themes 1a, 1b, 1c)
Effect 1
Change in services
and opportunities
(themes 1d, 1e, 1f)
Effect 2
Instability and
hardship at home
(theme 2b)
Attitudes, behaviours,
choices, and context
that are associated
with knife crime
(Macro) Policy Agenda
(Meso) Policy Output
(Micro) Policy Effects:
Community
(Micro) Policy Effects:
Individual
(Micro) Policy
Outcomes Knife crime
incidence
11
Table 1: Coding scheme and theory framework arising from interview data
Policies linked to austerity (meso level change)
Themes Excerpt
Pathway 1:
Public sector
changes and
effects on
provision
1a: Restructuring of
client-facing services
“Kingston has lost all its local authority
youth centres… it’s just meant people are
doing more… everyone’s doing two or three
people’s jobs. So we’ve kept up a lot of the
front-line provision” – interview 1
1b: Reductions in work
force
“Hounslow has no youth service any more…
they took me out of the service… and put me
in education welfare and then the rest of my
colleagues were just made redundant” -
interview 4
1c: Changes in police
numbers and engagement
with youth
“we have police placed in this building, we
have very good working relationships with
them. I think it’s an essential part of an
effective youth offending service” – interview
2
“we have a big Police Cadets thing going on,
school officers are much more involved with
young people” – interview 4
Pathway 2:
Welfare
policy
changes
2a: Changes to welfare
support and benefits
“without doubt cutting youth clubs had a
detrimental effect but not the greatest
compared to other austerity influences which
include state benefits” – interview 2
Individual and community level impacts (micro level change)
Themes Excerpt
Effect 1:
Change in
services and
opportunitie
s
1d: Reduction in youth
work and youth service
provision
“there’s a whole generation of young people
haven’t had that contact [with youth workers]”
– interview 1
1e: New youth projects
in development
“my colleague’s looking at setting up a knife
crime project with people from the youth
offending team” – interview 1
1f: Provision of
other/specialist support
including for mental
health
“there used be to a substance misuse team for
Richmond, that’s all gone, so we do that work
now. There’s less specialist interventions” –
interview 1
Effect 2:
Instability
and hardship
at home
2b: Challenging home
life including food
insecurity and poverty
“there’s a big problem, they’re generally living
in homes with not a lot of room, perhaps with
many siblings and that doesn’t necessarily
provide a safe place for hanging out. They don’t
want to hang out at school for obvious reasons so
then you start to say where do kids hang out” –
interview 3
12
Pathway 1: Public sector changes and effects on provision
Respondents corroborated the idea that Local Authorities bore a considerable
share of the spending cuts pushed through by successive budgets under the Coalition
Government. One youth worker described how their new team was formed after
reorganising their staffing and roles, asking employees to compete for a reduced
number of positions, and ending up with fewer staff with increased workloads: “there
were nine of us and there’s now three of us… people are doing more, everyone’s doing
two or three people’s jobs” (interviewee 1). A further aspect of the reforms was the
merging of services across boroughs, leading to situations like the one described in
Richmond and Kingston: one borough had more resources while the other had more
need, which one participant highlighted as a source of tension because of the potential
for job losses and instability if the two boroughs were to be separated administratively
in future.
The rationale for these reforms understood in theory, but questioned in: “it’s the
idea that local authorities share services [because] you cut down on senior
management, so save money on IT systems, HR everything like that. Whether that’s true
or not remains to be seen” (interviewee 1). A drawback to this approach has been a
reliance on short-term and temporary staff, creating continual pressures to fill staffing
vacancies, and precluding the opportunity for youth workers to form lasting
relationships with young people in the community: “you get bank staff in, they get
another job because they aren’t contracted to you…they’re here for less than six
months and they’re gone again, so you’re in a continuous thing of trying to get staff in”
(interviewee 4). The various changes prompted the same interviewee to ask whether the
sub-contracting was leading to value for money, and “would we be better served if we
took it in-house?”. While restructuring does not have to be counter-productive, and has
the potential to generate both administrative efficiencies and improved services, that is
not how restructuring was experienced in this case. Part of the problem appears to have
been the financial motivation for the restructuring, with service implications seemingly
an afterthought.
A second and related trend involved the ‘commissioning out’ of services, often
to third sector providers, leaving few youth centres within the control of the Local
13
Authority. As a form of outsourcing, this is consistent with public management reforms
associated with the austerity agenda (Bach, 2016, p. 15). It echoes the growth in
voluntary sector provision in other areas of the welfare state, notably food aid and
libraries, to cover the rollback of services once provided by LAs. Our data resonates
with the idea of a “relative withdrawal of the State” identified with respect to youth
offending teams, and the “changing structures for service delivery” (Haines and Case,
2018, pp. 139–140). Viewed from the perspective of Big Society-type aspirations,
perhaps there is a positive element to this trend, if taken to demonstrate social
entrepreneurship and the advantages of grassroots solutions (Levitas, 2012). The data
highlights community efforts to manage facilities previously run by LAs, such as
YMCA taking over two youth centres in Kingston, and sub-contracting one of these to a
faith-based community organisation; and also to create new facilities, such as the Steel
Warriors gym in Tower Hamlets, and other new initiatives on knife crime linking youth
workers and youth offending teams.
However, there remain concerns around how sustainable these services will be,
with a recognition that charities “can’t help everyone”. An interviewee from the
charitable sector described how their work relied on private grant-making bodies and ad
hoc donations from the private sector, and implied a reluctance to seek public sector
funding. Meanwhile, public sector interviewees explained the short-term planning
engendered by short-term budgeting: “I couldn’t put a five-year plan in now… [the]
budget, it’s so unclear at the moment…how much have we got, how much does that
translate to staff hours, how many staff hours should we have at each centre, all of this
is unclear” (interviewee 4).
14
Effect 1: Changes in public services and youth opportunities
These changes are explicitly linked to a loss in opportunities for young people.
The shutting down of youth centres meant there were fewer safe spaces for young
people, including those who were already vulnerable: “the decimation of youth services
[has] played a significant role…young people want to belong and somewhere to hang
out” (interviewee 3). Due to increased workloads and funding constraints, one
interviewee had to prioritise their core role of running the youth centre over being able
to organise wider services, such as a youth crime conference. Lack of clarity on budgets,
and constraints on hiring even part-time staff were used to explain why one youth centre
could not offer its music services and youth worker expertise to schools in the area:
“we’re not extending out into the community as much as we could” (interviewee 4).
Young people have to travel further to access specialist facilities such as a recording
studio.
Following restructuring, some youth workers were managed by staff with
different specialisms and background, in family work or social services, rather than
youth work. Youth workers themselves were being asked to provide support on areas
that previously were covered by specialist staff, for example on substance misuse.
There was recognition that “money isn’t the answer to everything, but it helps”.
Pathway 2: Welfare policy changes and effects on hardship
A second theme from the data highlights how welfare reforms changed the
support available to families, and the consequences for parental support and financial
insecurity. Interviewees emphasised housing benefit and income support reforms,
largely agreeing that they introduced further pressures for households facing a
challenging economy and labour market.
Specific welfare reforms were mentioned by interviewees. For example, one
found that “people were talking about their benefits a lot more than before” when
Universal Credit was being rolled out; another described the welfare system as not
being “compassionate” to families. One youth service explained they provided free
meals, where they would not have needed to previously.
15
Housing was singled out as a challenge, in terms of the quality of housing
available, the security of tenure, and the time involved in navigating the system: “many
of our young people are in families that are in insecure accommodation, [are at] risk of
losing accommodation, [for] whatever reason housing seems to be an issue…that level
of instability is always likely to cause young people to respond in an unorthodox
manner, but it also stops parents from being able to support their children if they’re
having to battle the landlords or local authority housing department” (interviewee 2).
A recurring sub-theme relates to the idea that hardship and stress may have
reduced parents’ capacity to supervise children, and attend to concerning behaviours or
attitudes: “ parents are having to work a lot to keep their heads above water, so they’re
not around much” (interviewee 1); “people have to work longer hours just to put food
on the table, so they’re not around to parent as much” (interviewee 4). The implication
in these discussions is that parents are fighting fires on various fronts. With this in mind,
one respondent felt that a key part of their work was to engage with parents. Another
respondent perceived a disconnect between the Government’s welfare reforms and the
daily trials he had observed families facing, the “dreadful” fears about money and
providing food. He traced a relationship between knife crime and the non-monetary
aspects of poverty, suggesting that while crime would not stop if Universal Credit was
doubled, more generous income support might afford parents more time to supervise
their children, which may help prevent some criminal behaviour.
Respondents also highlighted family issues that were not directly related to
austerity policies, but provided important context for young people at risk of getting
into trouble. For example, if parents were vulnerable due to having been in care
themselves, having experienced substance misuse or suffering poor mental health. An
interviewee who worked at a youth offending service suggested, “virtually every
parent we work with fits one of these categories”, and that such factors explained why
some young people lacked parental support.
16
Policing
There was considerable agreement across participants that police numbers were
only one aspect of the issue, and not necessarily the most important. An alternative
mechanism was raised, the time taken in “police processing” and delays in the justice
system. These factors were felt to reduce the deterrent effect of policing, and undermine
the perceived accountability for those accused of engaging in criminal behaviour. All
participants mentioned positive relationships with local police officers, which in some
cases extended to their engagement with young people. Although services have been
reduced, with one interviewee mentioning a local Safer Neighbourhood Team which
was closed and centralised, others spoke of a genuine “partnership” with the police, and
the value from an ongoing police cadets programme (see excerpts in Table 2). This
finding suggested that police numbers and spending may not serve as an important
explanatory pathway linking austerity and knife crime, as reflected in Figure 2.
From systemic factors to individual behaviours and attitudes towards knife crime
The data points to systemic issues of deprivation, shrinking social safety nets,
public sector reorganisations and cutbacks. At the community level these factors have
curtailed opportunities and safe physical spaces for young people to spend time outside
of school. The systemic factors have also created further hardship and instability at
home. We can relate these phenomena to the individual, specifically young men’s
behaviours and attitudes towards knives3.
A recurring theme was the lack of role models, and the importance of youth
centres in providing a sound and supportive influence on young people: “the guys who
run these youth centres are often held in incredibly high esteem by the kids that use it,
and it provides exposure to a way of thinking and a way of choosing to live your life
which you wouldn’t otherwise get” (interviewee 3). This relates back to the lack of
youth centres in some London boroughs, with another respondent describing a “whole
generation of young people haven’t had that contact…there’s no other adult
3 We deliberately refer to young men rather than young people to accurately reflect the interview
discussions.
17
professional that they have a positive relationship with, and that I think what’s got lost
for some young people” (interviewee 1).
Another recurring idea was the need to give young people an outlet for
“bravado” and “peacocking”, and a safe way to achieve “the respect of peers”. Youth
centres and gyms were able to do so in a better way than alternatives such as the
“roadman” lifestyle, or “bike life”. As prior literature has reported, carrying a knife was
often linked to fear, rather than intent, potentially based on misperceptions: “there’s a
belief that everyone’s carrying a knife and then they go, ‘alright, I need to protect
myself’” (interviewee 4). It further highlights the importance of education, social
norms, and opportunities for young people to access positive and supportive social
networks. School exclusion policies were also highlighted, with some doubt over the
effectiveness of sending students to pupil referral units, and concerns over whether
community safety was adversely affected. This too reinforces themes in the literature (E
ades et al., 2007; Clement, 2010), suggesting little has changed to address problems
identified before the austerity agenda was introduced.
Lastly, our interviewees expressed concerns that low or misplaced aspirations
might affect the balance of risks young people were willing to take. The challenge then
becomes: “how can you create lives… that are genuinely meaningful and worthwhile…
the idea that you are carrying a knife and might get a prison sentence or even get killed
might mean something to you because you value and treasure [your life] enough that it
becomes a deterrent” (interviewee 3). The premise of these discussions was the
importance of presenting a safe and rewarding lifestyle, built on realistic aspiration.
Reductions and reorganisations of youth service provision can be traced to a
problematic lack of positive role models, a dearth of opportunities, and a perceived (and
sometimes real) lack of personal security. Combined with a desire for gaining respect
and credibility, these factors can influence attitudes and behaviours in ways that have
been linked to criminal behaviours. In this way, our analysis of the qualitative data
connects our starting point – austerity policies – to our outcome of interest, knife crime
incidence.
18
4. Preliminary Test of Theory
In response to our overarching research question, two explanatory pathways
emerged that link austerity policies (specifically reforms to public spending and
organisation, and welfare support) with knife crime incidence. We draw on panel data
from 32 London boroughs over 2016/17 to 2019/20 to provide a quantitative
triangulation of the qualitative evidence.4
The first explanatory pathway – the services pathway – points to the importance
of past spending cuts on current outcomes, with qualitative data highlighting the role of
spending on services for young people and youth justice. Data is not readily available on
specific youth centres and services, so we use other means to model the public services
pathway. First, we relate spending in a given year to baseline levels from 2015. A
negative value to our spending variables indicates that outlays are lower in that year
than in 2015 (see table A1). Second, since sizeable fluctuations in spending from year to
year pose challenges for maintaining consistent frontline service delivery, we look at
annual change in spending. Third, we use a proxy variable for the reach and effect of
young people’s services, the proportion of young people aged 16-18 who are not in
education, employment or training (NEET). Our earlier theory implies the following
three hypotheses:
H1: Lower current spending relative to the baseline year of 2015 is associated with
higher current knife crime incidence
H2: Reductions in spending year to year is associated with higher current knife crime
incidence
H3: Higher proportion of young people who are not in education, employment or
training is associated with higher current knife crime incidence
The second explanatory pathway – the welfare pathway – suggests that reforms
have made social safety nets less generous and the welfare system more difficult to
navigate. Accordingly, boroughs with a higher proportion of people affected by welfare
4 Data is not readily available on the micro-level behaviours and attitudes of young people, and as such we
focus on uncovering further evidence of a relationship between the policy pathways and knife crime
outcomes.
19
reforms may face more acute hardship. This can create the conditions for instability at
home, which have been traced to riskier behaviours, leading to knife crime. We
operationalise welfare reforms by focusing on Universal Credit and Housing Benefit.
UC serves as an appropriate proxy for the wider welfare system. It is explicitly
mentioned in the interview data, and speaks to levels of reliance on welfare support; in
addition it is documented to be more stringent in its eligibility and conditionality.
Universal Credit was fully rolled out from 2018, giving rise to some challenge in
finding comparable statistics over the 2016-20 time period in relation to sanctions data.
Borough-level data is available on the proportion of households that claim UC, which
has been increasing over time as the full service has been extended nationwide. Official
statistics allow us to measure the number of households who have their housing benefit
capped. This indicator reflects the supportiveness of the welfare safety net, and as stated
in our qualitative analysis as well as prior research, the experience of being capped is
directly associated with financial resilience or hardship. Our theory suggests two more
hypotheses:
H4: Greater reliance on UC is positively associated with knife crime incidence
H5: Higher proportion of claimants experiencing capped housing benefit is positively
associated with knife crime incidence.
20
Statistical model and variables
A dataset of 128 observations covers 32 boroughs across 4 years. The
relationship between austerity and knife crime outcomes (Y) are expected to be
explained by a public services pathway (X1) and a welfare pathway (X2) (see equation
1). Knife crime incidence is from the Met Police Crime Statistics compiled in Allen and
Kirk-Wade (2019), converted into borough-level per capita terms using census data.
Spending variables (X1) are operationalised using data from official education statistics.
5 Welfare variables (X2) record UC claimants as a proportion of the borough’s
population and claimants who experience caps to their housing benefit.6
[1]
Y¿=α+β1. X¿
1+β1. X¿
2+ε
The model explores the variation in knife crime rates across LAs, focusing on
corresponding variations in youth spending per capita and exposure to welfare reforms
across LAs. The panel dataset allows us to control for the time-invariant contextual
factors and characteristics of the LA, using the conventional fixed effects model
specification.
Findings
Table 2 presents three model specifications, with the difference being the way in which
the public services pathway is modelled: column 1 considers spending relative to 2015
levels; column 2 looks at annual change; column 3 incorporates the proportion of young
people registered as NEET.
5 Data accessed at the Explore Education Statistics online data repository.
6 Data accessed at the Department for Work and Pension’s StatXplore data repository.
21
Table 2: Pathways from austerity to knife crime
Fixed effects regression (1) (2) (3)
Spending pathway
Youth justice spending per
capita relative to 2015
-0.191
(0.132) --0.176
(0.131)
Young persons spending
per capita relative to 2015
0.081
(0.116) -0.075
(0.115)
Youth justice spending
change on previous year -0.092*
(0.042) -
Young persons spending
change on previous year -0.054
(0.091) -
Young people aged 16-18
who are NEET - - -2.957
(3.129)
Welfare pathway
Proportion of households
on Universal Credit
5.614*
(2.634)
5.116
(2.953)
4.971
(2.485)
Proportion of households
whose Housing Benefit is
capped
24.381*
(10.540)
25.993**
(8.533)
24.148*
(10.496)
N 122 119 122
R20.174 0.301 0.186
Notes: Robust standard errors in parentheses, clustered at the LA level. Entries in official data
registered as zero spending were re-coded as missing, reducing the sample size to 122. Statistical
significance denoted by * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01. Column 3 UC coefficient is close to the conventional
threshold with p=0.054. See appendix for robustness checks using a random effects estimator.
We expected lower spending on services for young people and youth justice
would be positively associated with knife crime. Of the variables used to operationalise
the public services pathway, only the annual change in youth justice spending is
statistically significant (column 2), and the coefficients on all the variables are small.
The statistical analysis offers only tentative support for hypothesis 2. It is not clear why
the coefficient is positive, which implies that positive changes in annual spending are
associated with higher knife crime levels. One explanation is that spending increases are
being targeted where need is greatest. We find no support for hypotheses 1 and 3, but
find in the data a bivariate correlation between the proportion of young people who are
NEET and knife crime (see appendix). Overall, statistical analysis does not offer
support for the public services pathway.
22
We also expected that knife crime would be positively associated with a greater
reliance on reformed welfare support that altered eligibility and reduced financial
support. Our analysis supports both hypotheses 4 and 5, and corroborates the
importance of the welfare reform pathway. Knife crime incidence is positively
associated with the proportion of households claiming UC (column 1), and with the
proportion of households who experienced caps to their housing support (columns 1 –
3). The magnitude and significance of the coefficients are stable across model
specifications for the housing benefit variable; although the UC variable is more
sensitive to model specification. The findings are consistent with emerging research
linking UC rollout to other crime outcomes (Tiratelli, Bradford and Yesberg, 2020);
although the sensitivity of our findings on UC mean that no simple generalisations are
possible (the same conclusion arises in Lim and Pickering, 2020). Perhaps the strongest
message from Table 2 is the importance of housing as a key intermediary variable that
connects austerity to welfare reforms, and on to knife crime outcomes, triangulating
well with our respondents’ views on housing benefit reforms.
5. Discussion
Our research design points to the feasibility and value of mixed methods
research to address a policy problem as knotty as knife crime – not least to address the
potential weaknesses of qualitative and quantitative data taken in isolation from one
another. A strength of the study is in sequencing the qualitative analysis first for theory-
building and unpacking causal mechanisms, followed by a preliminary test of the theory
using a statistical dataset (Martin, 2013). Limitations of the study include its
geographical and time series coverage, and the challenges of potential simultaneity bias
in unpacking the spending and public services pathway.
The theoretical process tracing methodology proposes two causal mechanisms.
We offer evidence validating one; additional empirical analysis is needed to further
investigate the framework presented in Figure 1. We suggest three avenues for future
research. Firstly, qualitative research could be undertaken with a larger number of
participants and varied frontline roles including social workers, further education
teachers, staff with responsibility for children in care, as well as young people and
23
families at risk, or with prior experience, of knife crime. Secondly, while these steps
were beyond the scope of the current exercise, future work could consider a larger
sample size with broader geographical coverage across England or the UK, and more
granular time-series data at a monthly level. Thirdly, the statistical indicators for the
public services pathway could be extended beyond spending figures to better capture
administrative reforms and service delivery.
A more challenging, but arguably worthwhile, research ambition would be to
further interrogate the causal relationship between welfare reforms and knife crime.
Alternative quantitative methods, such as structural equation modelling, natural
experiments, and regression discontinuity design, might allow future research to better
understand the complex inter-relationships between policy outputs and effects at
community and individual levels. This will require new data collection that
comprehensively covers each step of the theoretical pathways we present. Improved
and more data on the spending pathway would be particularly valuable for
understanding our apparently null results on spending cuts and knife crime incidence.
6. Conclusions
Our study set out to examine the presumed association between austerity and
knife crime, two policy phenomena that dominated public debates over 2010-20.
Qualitative data from interview with frontline staff provide rich insights into the nature
and experience of public sector restructuring and spending cuts, and the challenges of
navigating new eligibility criteria and processes to access welfare support. Our analysis
generated two potential pathways from austerity to knife crime outcomes, which were
operationalised using statistical indicators from London over 2017-20. Regression
analysis provided an initial test and triangulation of the theory framework.
We find statistically significant support for the welfare reform pathway
(p<0.05), corroborating findings from the qualitative analysis. The results lend
credence to our theorised relationship between welfare reforms and knife crime. We do
not find support for the pathway concerning changes to public services. However, this
may reflect limitations with the spending indicators used, and their (in)ability to capture
administrative reforms and changes in the quality and reach of services for young
24
people. Future research could usefully combine qualitative and quantitative data to
delve deeper in to the community and individual level impacts of austerity.
These findings contribute to scholarly debates on the legacy of austerity for
societal outcomes (Stuckler et al., 2017; Roberts, 2021); and resonate with research
highlighting associations between welfare reforms and personal hardship, such as
Hardie’s (2021) finding that Universal Credit has increased housing insecurity and
repossession rates. The results demonstrate the wide-reaching implications of austerity
policy: an agenda framed as a means to manage public finances has generated spillover
effects far beyond this objective. Our work lends support to renewed calls during the
Covid-19 pandemic to better support low-income families and young people. Statutory
safety nets being more compassionate and easier to navigate may reduce anti-social and
criminal behaviour and outcomes.
Emotive crisis language (‘epidemic’) and a focus on individuals may put knife
crime on the public agenda, but our analysis emphasises the social and institutional
context that young people are influenced and constrained by, and which are essential for
understanding their actions and attitudes. We highlight the importance of how LA teams
are structured and resourced, and how their planning horizons matter for the way they
organise and deliver services for communities. Social and institutional context includes
the way in which welfare support provides meaningful and accessible safety nets to
vulnerable families; and more broadly, the routes by which local services can affect
communities and households.
25
References
Aberbach, J. D. and Rockman, B. A. (2002) ‘Conducting and coding elite interviews’, PS -
Political Science and Politics, 35(4), pp. 673–676. doi: 10.1017/S1049096502001142.
Alesina, A. and Ardagna, S. (1998) ‘Tales of fiscal adjustment’, Economic Policy, 13(27).
doi: 10.1111/1468-0327.00039.
Allen G. and Kirk-Wade E. (2020) Knife Crime in England and Wales: Briefing Paper.
Alston, P. (2019) Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights.
New York.
Bach, S. (2016) ‘Deprivileging the public sector workforce: Austerity, fragmentation and
service withdrawal in Britain’, The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 27(1). doi:
10.1177/1035304615627950.
Berry, S. (2020) London’s Lost Youth Services 2020. London.
Bramley, G. et al. (2021) State of Hunger: Building the Evidence on Poverty, Destitution, and
Food Insecurity in the UK.
Carmichael, F. and Ward, R. (2000) ‘Youth unemployment and crime in the English regions
and Wales’, Applied Economics, 32(5), pp. 559–571. doi: 10.1080/000368400322462.
Clement, M. (2010) ‘Teenagers under the knife: a decivilising process’, Journal of Youth
Studies, 13(4). doi: 10.1080/13676261003802406.
Eades, C. et al. (2007) ‘Knife Crime’: A Review of Evidence and Policy.
Farrall, S., Gray, E. and Mike Jones, P. (2020) ‘Politics, Social and Economic Change, and
Crime: Exploring the Impact of Contextual Effects on Offending Trajectories*’, Politics and
Society, 48(3), pp. 357–388. doi: 10.1177/0032329220942395.
Fitzpatrick, S. et al. (2019) The Homelessness Monitor: England 2019.
Haines, K. and Case, S. (2018) ‘The Future of Youth Justice’, Youth Justice, 18(2). doi:
10.1177/1473225418791416.
Hardie, I. (2021) ‘The Impact of Universal Credit Rollout on Housing Security: An Analysis
of Landlord Repossession Rates in English Local Authorities’, Journal of Social Policy,
50(2). doi: 10.1017/S0047279420000021.
Haylock, S. et al. (2020) ‘Risk factors associated with knife-crime in United Kingdom among
young people aged 10-24 years: A systematic review’, BMC Public Health, 20(1). doi:
10.1186/s12889-020-09498-4.
Home Affairs Committee (2018) Policing For The Future: Tenth Report of Session 2017-19.
Hsieh, H.-F. and Shannon, S. E. (2005) ‘Three Approaches to Qualitative Content Analysis’,
Qualitative Health Research. SAGE Publications Inc, 15(9), pp. 1277–1288. doi:
10.1177/1049732305276687.
Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2021) UK Poverty Statistics. Available at:
26
https://www.jrf.org.uk/data (Accessed: 17 June 2021).
Kentikelenis, A. et al. (2014) ‘Greece’s health crisis: from austerity to denialism’, The
Lancet, 383(9918). doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(13)62291-6.
Krugman, P. (2015) ‘The Austerity Delusion’, The Guardian, 29 April.
Levitas, R. (2012) ‘The Just’s Umbrella: Austerity and the Big Society in Coalition policy
and beyond’, Critical Social Policy, 32(3). doi: 10.1177/0261018312444408.
Lim, K. Y. and Pickering, R. (2020) Crime Heterogeneity and Welfare Spending Theory and
Empirical Evidence based on the Universal Credit System. NBS Discussion Papers in
Economics 2020/04.
Loopstra, R. et al. (2015) ‘Austerity, sanctions, and the rise of food banks in the UK’, British
Medical Journal, 1775(April), pp. 6–11. doi: 10.1136/bmj.h1775.
Loopstra, R. et al. (2018) ‘Impact of Welfare Benefit Sanctioning on Food Insecurity: a
Dynamic Cross-Area Study of Food Bank Usage in the UK’, Journal of Social Policy, 47(3).
doi: 10.1017/S0047279417000915.
Martin, C. J. (2013) ‘Crafting Interviews to Capture Cause and Effect’, in Mosley, L. (ed.)
Interview Research in Political Science. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. doi:
10.7591/9780801467974-008.
Mason, W. (2015) ‘Austerity Youth Policy: Exploring Distinctions Between Youth Work in
Principle and Youth Work in Practice’, Youth & Policy, (114), pp. 55–74.
Palasinski, M. et al. (2021) ‘Masculinity, Injury, and Death: Implications for Anti-Knife-
Carrying Messages’, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 36(13–14). doi:
10.1177/0886260518822341.
Palasinski, M. and Riggs, D. W. (2012) ‘Young White British Men and Knife-Carrying in
Public: Discourses of Masculinity, Protection and Vulnerability’, Critical Criminology, 20(4).
doi: 10.1007/s10612-012-9161-4.
Roberts, S. (2019) ‘The London killings of 2018: the story behind the numbers and some
proposed solutions’, Crime Prevention and Community Safety, 21(2), pp. 94–115. doi:
10.1057/s41300-019-00064-8.
Roberts, S. (2021) Solutions to Knife Crime: A Path Through the Red Sea? Vernon Press.
Straw, I. et al. (2018) ‘Knife crime in London, UK: a youth perspective’, The Lancet, 392.
doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(18)32212-8.
Stuckler, D. et al. (2017) ‘Austerity and health: The impact in the UK and Europe’, European
Journal of Public Health, 27(September 2012), pp. 18–21. doi: 10.1093/eurpub/ckx167.
Taylor-Gooby, P., Leruth, B. and Chung, H. (2017) After Austerity: Welfare State
Transformation in Europe after the Great Recession. Edited by P. Taylor-Gooby, B. Leruth,
and H. Chung. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/oso/9780198790266.001.0001.
Tiratelli, M., Bradford, B. and Yesberg, J. (2020) The Political Economy of Crime: Did
Universal Credit Increase Crime Rates? Open Science Framework SocArXiv.
Torjesen, I. (2018) ‘Can public health strategies tackle London’s rise in fatal violence?’,
27
British Medical Journal, 361(k1578). doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k1578.
UNISON (2018) Youth Services At Breaking Point.
Watkins, J. et al. (2017) ‘Effects of health and social care spending constraints on mortality in
England: a time trend analysis’, BMJ Open, 7(e017722). doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2017-017722.
Wickham, S. et al. (2020) ‘Effects on mental health of a UK welfare reform, Universal
Credit: a longitudinal controlled study’, The Lancet Public Health, 5(3). doi: 10.1016/S2468-
2667(20)30026-8.
Wood, R. (2010) ‘UK: the reality behind the “knife crime” debate’, Race & Class, 52(2). doi:
10.1177/0306396810377012.
Yates, J. (2012) ‘What Prospects Youth Justice? Children in Trouble in the Age of Austerity’,
Social Policy and Administration, 46(4), pp. 432–447. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-
9515.2012.00842.x.
YMCA (2020) Out of Service.
28
Appendix
Table A1
Description Mean values across London
2017 2018 2019 2020
Knife crime Incidence of knife crime per
100,000 population 1.34 1.63 1.67 1.74
Public service
changes
(Pathway 1)
Spending on youth justice per
capita (nominal terms) £28.10 £25.10 £24.73 £27.88
Spending on youth justice per
capita as a share of 2015 level
per capital
-3.1% -13.3% -16.1% -3.6%
Spending on young people per
capita (nominal terms) £47.95 £39.03 £45.54 £40.26
Spending on young people’s
services per capita as a share
of 2015 level per capita
-18.6% -32.4% -29.1% -28.0%
Aged 16-18 and not in
employment, education or
training (Government NEET
2020 data)
5.0% 5.0% 4.7% 4.1%
Welfare
reforms
(Pathway 2)
Universal Credit claimants as
a share of borough population 0.59% 1.16% 2.00% 3.93%
Proportion of households in
borough whose Housing
Benefit is capped
1.29% 1.86% 1.74% 1.43%
Table A2
Random effects regressions (1) (2)
Youth justice spending per capita
relative to 2015
-0.172
(0.127) -
Young persons spending per capita
relative to 2015
0.086
(0.116) -
Youth justice spending change on
previous year -0.096*
(0.042)
Young persons spending change on
previous year -0.060
(0.086)
Proportion of households on
Universal Credit
5.860*
(2.469)
5.295
(2.796)
Proportion of households whose
housing benefit is capped
24.212*
(9.553)
25.220**
(7.864)
Observations 122 119
R20.174 0.300
Notes: Hausman test statistics could not rule out the use of random effects models for models 1 and 2.
The results are reported here as an additional robustness check. They confirm the findings from Table
2. Robust standard errors in parentheses clustered at borough level.
Statistical significance denoted by * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001
29
30
Figure A1: Knife crime and young people recorded as NEET (across London boroughs,
2017-20)
31