Idris Elba's whitewashing of UK knife crime badly misses point



The new BBC documentary "Idris Elba: Our Knife Crime Crisis" could not have come at a more appropriate time. The number of knife-related deaths in Britain among ages 13 to 19 has increased dramatically over the last decade, from 56% to 83%.

Reports of such senseless violence have become commonplace.

Highlighting rising knife crime in Somerset, Bedfordshire, and Sussex — which are whiter and more rural — implies a trend without comparing absolute rates.

In early January, 14-year-old Kelyan Bokassa was killed on a London bus after two machete-wielding attackers — themselves both teens — stabbed him 27 times. Weeks later, 12-year-old Leo Ross was stabbed to death in Birmingham while walking home from school; his alleged assailant was 15. In June, three teenagers were charged with the stabbing death of 14-year-old Ibrahima Seck in Manchester.

Actor Elba, who himself grew up in crime-ravaged East London, launched a campaign to eradicate knife violence in early 2024. Now comes this documentary, which follows the "Thor" star around the country as he talks to people behind the grim statistics.

A teachable moment

Elba interviews victims, offenders, and trauma doctors. Along the way, he meets politicians and senior police officers in an attempt to devise a new, more interventionist approach to law and order — a way to stop these young men from resorting to knives in the first place.

It's apparently also important to Elba to clear up certain stereotypes associated with stabbings. A pivotal moment in the documentary comes when the actor seeks out the sister of Harold Pitman, a white 16-year-old who was stabbed to death in London last New Year’s Eve.

Here, Elba can't help but turn the meeting into a teachable moment, gently reminding Tayla Pitman that the majority of knife-crime perpetrators are white. “When Harry was killed," Tayla confirms, "[people said] 'I bet it was a black person,' and it wasn’t — it was another white boy.”

Those surprised by the race of Harry's killer were doubtless also flummoxed by the recent harrowing Netflix series "Adolescence," which chooses to address this topical issue via the real-time arrest and interrogation of a fictional 13-year-old white killer.

"Adolescence" neatly sidesteps the issue of race altogether by making the killer's victim a female classmate, also white. The violence here stems from "toxic masculinity" and influencers like Andrew Tate, among other 2025 boogeymen.

RELATED: Netflix sounds an alarm with painful 'Adolescence'

'Adolescence' co-creator and star, Stephen Graham. John Nacion/Getty Images

Misleading statistics

The Guardian's review of "Our Knife Crime Crisis" approvingly repeats a statistic cited in the documentary: "The film immediately tackles common misconceptions around knife crime as a problem within black and brown urban communities, when in fact 69% of perpetrators are white, and it is spreading fastest in Somerset, Bedfordshire, and Sussex."

But where does this statistic come from? A cursory search turns up no clear source. Dig a little deeper, and the closest match appears to be nationwide conviction data for knife possession — not overall knife crime. In that context, around 69% of those convicted are white.

Moreover, highlighting rising knife crime in Somerset, Bedfordshire, and Sussex — which are whiter and more rural — implies a trend without comparing absolute rates.

Urban centers like London, Birmingham, and Manchester still have higher overall knife-crime numbers. The regions named may have seen percentage increases, but from much lower baselines.

An uncomfortable truth

More pertinent statistics come from the London Assembly: "Despite making up only 13% of London’s total population, black Londoners account for 45% of London’s knife murder victims, 61% of knife murder perpetrators, and 53% of knife crime perpetrators." Moreover, the Times finds that the majority of these victims and perpetrators are under the age of 24.

Anyone who, like Elba, sincerely wishes to understand this issue, must first face an uncomfortable truth: Black teenagers are considerably overrepresented in knife-crime statistics.

That mentioning this truth in public is discouraged, to say the least, impedes any practical attempts to prevent knife crime.

Failure to police

Take the example of stop and search, which is generally seen as a highly effective method of removing weapons from the streets. London Mayor Sadiq Khan opposes the use of this operational strategy, claiming baseless charges of "structural racism" and racial profiling. As a result, the use of stop and search in the capital has decreased by 44% since 2022.

New data published in January reveals the arrest rate has dropped in part due to a dramatic reduction in the use of stop and search. Between 2018 and 2023, the number of under-18s arrested for knife offenses fell by 33%, yet offenses rose. The London Metropolitan Police conducted 118,688 searches in the year ending January 2025, roughly a quarter fewer than the previous year. Almost half of them involved black youths under the age of 24.

Given Khan's belief in the inherent "institutional racism" of his city's police force, it's hardly surprising that he would do nothing to reverse the capital's decline in law enforcement manpower.

Since 2008, the number of police stations serving the capital has decreased from 160 to 36, a 75% reduction. This is despite policing a city of about nine million people. This is expected to drop even further — to 32 (one per London Borough). Meanwhile, budget cuts have led to two-thirds of police stations closing in England since 2010.

With one station for every quarter of a million residents, it’s reasonable to assume that crime has increased. According to the Office for National Statistics, the police recorded 14,577 knife offenses in 2023, a 20% rise from the previous year. With officers constantly burdened with trivial work like recording offensive language as non-crime hate incidents, it is no surprise that knife crime — and all crime — goes unsolved.

Knives out

If policing is off the table, what's left?

Elba has a suggestion: Design kitchen knives to have dull points. Such a "solution" is in keeping with the Labour government's approach.

A little more than a year ago, the U.K. witnessed its most shocking knife crime yet. Seventeen-year-old Axel Rudakubana, a second-generation Rwandan immigrant, entered a children's Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport and began stabbing. By the time he was subdued, he had brutally slaughtered three girls: Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine.

News of the killings sparked furious protests around the country, fueled by erroneous online reports that Rudakubana was an illegal immigrant and a Muslim. The media was quick to denounce this "misinformation" as the sole culprit of the unrest, while failing to acknowledge the simmering tension built up by decades of unchecked immigration and failed assimilation.

In response to all this, the U.K. government announced a crackdown on knife sales — including a ban on doorstep sales and an age verification for online purchases. It’s part of Labour’s vow to "halve knife crime over the next decade."

RELATED: Protests and violent rioting continue to erupt across the UK over gruesome stabbing attack on girls at dance studio

Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Token gestures

Here, it's perhaps worth stating the obvious: A knife has edges, and people die just as well from being slashed as from being stabbed. During the early 1900s, razors were the weapon of choice for many "razor gangs" throughout Britain. Besides, anything with a point can be used to kill someone. A sharpened stick, fork, corkscrew, or screwdriver can end a life.

A ban will do nothing. Newly manufactured safety knives will not only be ineffective, but no one will buy them, reducing the blade’s aesthetic appeal and function for the law-abiding majority. None of these suggestions will stop the use of weapons on our streets.

While politicians and celebrities make token gestures, teenage boys continue to die in record numbers. We must not fall victim to rose-tinted utopianism, which says we can remedy this problem with more youth clubs and pool tables. If we want to prevent young people from killing each other, we must first increase stop and search and fight the activist ideology that sees the police as a proxy for racialized state oppression.

Drill killers

Then, you must wage a genuine culture war: Go after the drill rappers. I am not advocating for the suspension of civil liberties, but anyone familiar with the genre will recognize that much of this music celebrates particular killings. Mdot, Hypo, and Showkey were all rappers killed between 2016 and 2022. Zone 2, another drill group, mentioned the killing of Sidique Kamara, a.k.a Incognito, in the song "No Censor."

Many of these murders are related to gang feuds, as they fight over territory related to drug distribution. As such, intervention starts at home. A strong father figure frequently serves as a role model, guiding a young son through his formative years. According to data, 43% of black African children in the U.K. and 63% of children of black Caribbean heritage in the U.K. are raised by single parents. As one reformed gang member told the Daily Telegraph, “I remember a member of a gang once saying to me, ‘If you are not going to raise your children, we will raise them for you.’”

Linguistic pedants have previously chastised me for using the term "epidemic" to characterize the issue of knife crime. It’s not a disease, I’m told. I would argue that young people killing others at record levels for petty squabbles, unpaid drug debts, and arbitrary boundaries on a map IS a disease.

Our cultural elites’ allegiance to these progressive nostrums is dangerous. They will be ineffective. Just like Elba’s suggestion, it’s missing the point.

Netflix sounds an alarm with painful 'Adolescence'



Let’s get this out of the way first. The new Netflix limited series “Adolescence” is utterly astonishing.

Astonishing in a good way, as you may never see a more amazingly crafted piece of television.

The four episodes explore Jamie’s initial denial of guilt and his father’s horror at seeing the CCTV footage of his son stabbing the girl over and over again.

The writing, acting, and production are top notch. However, the reason “Adolescence” stands out from other top-tier shows is that each of the four hour-or-so-long episodes is done in one take.

That means the whole one-hour episode is one very long camera shot. It also means the actors — including the young teen playing the lead role — cannot make any mistakes. All of the actors, for a whole hour, are basically performing live theater. No retakes, no catching their breath to refocus on the scene. Just one long camera shot.

And there are four episodes. They did this four times! So yeah, that’s astonishing. They deserve to win all the awards at those insufferable awards shows.

But it’s also an astonishing gut punch, particularly for parents of teens.

Telling it how it is, probably at your kids' school

I understand the story was based on real-life events, but the script seems to have veered off on its own, and this storyline is indeed all too realistic, not to mention incredibly painful to watch.

“Adolescence” tells the story of a 13-year-old boy named Jamie, who is attracted to an older girl at school who is bullied by someone sharing topless photos she apparently had taken. After Jamie tries to be kind to her, in a self-professed attempt to date her, she rejects him and then mocks him on social media as an “incel” — involuntary celibate.

The mocking escalates, and he responds, one night while he and his friends are out roaming the town, by stabbing her to death.

The four episodes explore Jamie’s initial denial of guilt and his father’s horror at seeing the CCTV footage of his son stabbing the girl over and over again. The second episode has the police interviewing kids at Jamie’s school, where it becomes obvious that these kids are living in a world that the adults are not bothering with; the disrespect shown to the teachers seems to underscore the fact that the teachers are not connecting in any meaningful way with their students.

The third episode aims to reveal what’s in Jamie’s head — it’s a long interview with a psychologist — and we get a pretty clear picture of a 13-year-old who is dealing with adult issues, over-sexualized behaviors, and social media bullying — all without the benefit of any adult intervention.

The most painful television I've ever watched

The fourth episode — quite possibly the most painful I have ever watched — concerns the parents struggling with the guilt that their neighbors and community have already assigned to them. The parents and their 18-year-old daughter endure a highly unpleasant family outing where the father is recognized as the killer’s dad. After the older sister shows love and compassion for her parents despite having just endured said outing, her father asks her mother, “How did we make her?” To which mom replies, “The same way we made him.”

The point being that they did the same things, and one child seems to be coping and well-adjusted and loving ... while the other stabbed a girl multiple times, in uncontrollable rage.

But let’s go back and talk about what is depicted.

  1. A hardworking father running his own plumbing business, who often leaves by 6 a.m., not to return till 8 p.m.
  1. A child trapped, spending all day in an institution where adult order and control has broken down, with rampant disrespectful behavior toward whatever authority does exist but especially among the teens toward each other. Young teens at the school engaging in adult sexualized behavior (nude photos, mocking a 13-year-old for being a virgin), and no adults caring enough to see or intervene.
  1. A 13-year-old who regularly comes home, marches upstairs, and spends the rest of the night on his computer by himself — except when he is out with his friends, fairly late at night with no adult supervision.

We find out about the dad’s long hours and the son’s computer time during the parents’ painful self-examination in episode 4. They rightly surmise that they could have done better, but regarding the computer time, the father points out that all the kids are that way these days.

'All kids are like that' — no excuse

Yes, they are. But they don’t have to be. And “kids being that way” — as well as tired parents working long hours — cannot be an excuse for no communication. Parents have to talk to their kids. A lot. There has to be a relationship.

The unsupervised roaming around at night goes hand in hand with the complete lack of communication. Obviously, parents should know where a 13-year-old is, especially at 10 p.m. That issue is never addressed, nor is the fact that the child’s school is a cesspool of toxic, inappropriate behaviors. Schools bear far too much resemblance to prisons — architecturally and procedurally — and the inmates can be feral in both.

I know. That’s pretty much every middle school, junior high, or high school, right? But if you’re thinking that — why are your kids there, again? Because there are alternatives. The point here is that the older your child gets, they continue to need plenty of time with you. And you have to be the one who makes sure that happens, because they won’t.

Failure of authority

Other reviewers are saying this miniseries is a referendum on “toxic masculinity.”

I guess it is a male child who stabs a female child, and that’s about as toxic as it gets. But it isn't because of his masculinity. It is a lack of masculinity.

We see teachers with no authority to provide a safe and effective learning environment; a father with no time to build trust so that Jamie can bring him his problems; parents caught up in their own problems and pursuits, who have a niggling feeling that all that computer time is not great, but they are willing to tell themselves “all kids are like that” while their son is alone in his room being torn to shreds, his confidence destroyed, his moral compass irretrievably broken.

Should you watch it?

I can’t recommend it, really. It’s peppered with profanity, but that pales in comparison to the emotional pain of watching it unfold. (The acting is exemplary, particularly Owen Cooper as Jamie and "Adolescence" co-creator Stephen Graham as his dad.)

However. If you have a teen in school ... or a teen who spends a lot of time alone in his/her room or on his/her phone or computer ... or a teen who’s out at night, you know not where ... then YES. You should watch all four episodes. In fact, you should go get that teen and have them watch with you. And then you should talk about it. All of it.

What could be a more important use of your time than that?

Another perspective

Dr. Justin Coulson raises some excellent points with his thoughtful review of “Adolescence” that I think are also worth consideration.

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