Recently in London, the media has reported a series of violent attacks and crimes committed especially by the youth. This year alone there have been at least 36 fatal stabbings, not including those which have not been critical. This uproar of violence has led to a range of discussions, 2 of which have been the most prominent.

1. Has there been more stabbings or are the media just reporting more?

2. What is the true and root cause of this violence?

Through debate, there is no clear answer to these queries. In regard to the first question, debate has said that it is more likely that the media are just reporting more. This is due to the fact that the Met records show that last year up until September 2017, there had been 37,443 knife offences in the UK, but thinking back to just 6 months ago were these offences reported as vigorously as they have been in the past few months? The answer to that is clearly no.

Allusive to the second discussion, a wider channel of argument is facilitated. Where there are many suggestions of reasonable root causes to this violence, there is plainly not one straight answer. Here are some of the roots which are up for discussion on social media. One suggestion to the root cause of this violence is the cuts made by the government to youth services. When looking at the purpose of youth services, they stand to bring the younger community together but also to teach life skills. With cuts made to these services, where do the youth who don’t want to be at home go for peace of mind? I’ll tell you where. To the streets. Perhaps if there were youth services, it would be more unlikely that boys of this age cohort would get into negative situations with other boys that live on the same street. With negative vibrations echoed down the streets and towns in light of ‘post code wars’ how can there not be violence?

One other factor that had the finger pointed at was drill music. Drill music is defined as ‘a trap music originating in the south side of Chicago’. In the UK, drill music has been on its road to fame where many artists as young as 15 years of age have received 7 million plus views on YouTube. It is not sufficing to blame drill music for the violence even though it is influential in the life of violence that some of the youth are evidently living. Drill music, a very powerful tool, is influential in ways of; desensitising the youth to violence but also dictating the actions of the youth involved in this lifestyle. With both of these influences in effect, it is visible that drill does take a role in the violence but is it really valid to suggest it’s the root? No. This is merely because, drill music is a CONSEQUENCE of the violence. Where stabbings have occurred, these artists have taken liberty to rap about what they have seen or experienced, thus foregrounding its secondary position in the surge of violence. To put it simply, without violence, there would be no drill. Its secondary position arises from the fact that drill music unfortunately dictates what the youth who participate in this violence do. If an artist raps about violence directly towards someone, that person/group will actively take measures. It can be easily said that drill music is a communicative exchange between gangs or members of violence, but it is not adequate to allocate blame to drill music where there are more serious and conspicuous root causes of the violence.

Other reasons that have been up for debate include: institutional racism, poor relationhip between the youth and the police, poverty, hyper-masculinity and mental health. In deep exploration of these reasons, it becomes evidenced that there is no one set reason for the surge of violence in our youth today.