Knife crime is rising – and we're closing down the very places that could stop it

As autumn draws in, we have started to look back wistfully at the joys of summer. Yet in some poorer pockets of Britain, those longer daylight hours, higher temperatures, shorter tempers and freedom from the classroom also made life more challenging for parents and youth workers.

In August, four teenage boys were stabbed to death in the UK. Three of them were killed in London.

For the past two years, I have volunteered at the Marcus Lipton community centre in Brixton, south London, which serves young people who live in a hotspot of poverty, neglect and family instability. Violence among teenagers is a common feature of local life, and postcode-defined gang wars between groups of disenfranchised male teenagers living in rival housing estates have cemented over decades. The psychological commitment to carrying a knife has been normalised, perceived as the most accessible means of survival.

“For boys like these, picking up a knife before leaving the house is like putting on shoes,” Ira Campbell, managing director of Marcus Lipton, told me recently. “We have to come to terms with that if we are going to stop it.”

So far this year, 26 children and teenagers have been fatally stabbed, a number charted by The Guardian’s ongoing Beyond The Blade project, which aims to better understand the extent of the problem and possible solutions. Countless other young people will have, or will know someone who has, been injured at the hands of a knife this year.

While it is true that the epidemic of knife crime has been a cyclical concern for years, it is again on the rise, particularly in London. The London mayor Sadiq Khan’s new preventive strategy is a response to that; the MP for Croydon Central, Sarah Jones, is launching a new all-party parliamentary group on knife crime.

I can’t speak for those working with young people outside London, although cuts to youth services appear to be hitting provision across Britain. But my experience working at Marcus Lipton has convinced me that community centres are also central to finding a solution. They should be seen as an opportunity to better understand young men and discourage them from picking up knives. An increase in the number of stop-and-searches might work for getting these weapons off the streets – as the Metropolitan police commissioner Cressida Dick has repeatedly proposed. But even aside from its problematic use, this strategy will not solve the deep-seated paranoia experienced daily by many of the young people I have worked with.

This is not to suggest that those who carry knives should not be under surveillance or punished. But a greater emphasis should be placed on addressing the root causes of youth violence and its connection to the impoverished social context in which it tends to occur, rather than simplistically hammering the behaviour.

“Why would a wealthy kid need to come here? They’re comfortable at home,” Ira Campbell noted, when I asked him why people went to community centres. “Kids that come to places like this, it’s their escape from everything else they’ve got going on in their household, in their school. It’s a place where they can be free for a bit.”

All young people require safe spaces in their local area in the evenings, at weekends and during school holidays. Last year, I was among those who ran a weekly discussion group called “Hero’s Journey” for teenage boys at Marcus Lipton. Every Friday night we would sit around a coffee table and debate topics such as school, money and police. Our group became a consistent opportunity to expose the boys to new conversations and experiences, and a relaxed source of education outside school, in a space they felt comfortable.

Community centres could deliver programmes that keep young men off the streets, encouraging them to think critically about their lives and the potential consequences of their actions. But this is difficult when public centres are in decline.

According to research published this year, at least £22m has been cut from youth service budgets across London since 2011. More than 30 youth centres have closed, at least 12,700 places for young people have been lost, and council youth service employment has been reduced on average by 39%. There is no cruder example of how the government’s austerity project is placing a stranglehold on the lives of the most vulnerable.

I have seen the extent to which Marcus Lipton struggles to sustain itself financially. At the worst of times, Campbell – a man with 30 years of community-work experience – finds it difficult to pay his staff properly. This is a direct result of the centre’s constantly tightening budget, and it renders the delivery of any comprehensive, well-staffed weekly programme impossible.

Typically, every few months the centre is forced to write bids to compete for funding, rather than being encouraged and funded more sustainably. Ruthless market competition, rather than stable state provision, is tending to dictate how money is spent. This is neither fair nor effective. It means providing young people in inner cities with safe and purposeful space is becoming increasingly difficult.

Boys and girls in the most neglected communities could be benefiting from critical thinking or conflict resolution or mentoring interventions, to name a few examples. Instead, they are pushed to spend idle time hanging out on their estate, or in heavily policed streets, where confrontation is a near inevitability.

Youth violence is a complex issue and there is no quick fix. But the government could make bigger strides in preventing its prevalence and the possession of knives. More state-funded investment into the community centre model would allow us to understand and support young people on their own terms.

• Ciaran Thapar is a youth worker and writer based in south London