From blades to bars: U.K. charity tackles rising knife crime

In London alone, the number of knife or sharp instrument offences recorded by the police rose to more than 15,016 in 2023-24

Ben Wintour looked over the equipment that made up the London outdoor exercise park: pull-up bars, parallel bars, angled benches — all formed out of melted-down knives.

The equipment in each callisthenics park is made from knives provided by London’s Metropolitan Police force: knives that were either surrendered voluntarily or seized in a bid to tackle rising knife crime.

“Our gyms stand as a powerful metaphor... that a negative can be turned into a positive,” he said.

This gym at a park near Brixton, south London, is one of four in the British capital constructed by the “Steel Warriors” charity. Mr. Wintour and co-founder Pia Fontes set it up in 2017 to steer young people away from knife crime.

“There’s a lot of awareness around it, but we wanted to understand what the reasons were for young people carrying knives,” Mr. Wintour said on a sunny morning at the gym, where around a dozen people were training. He said a need for self-protection, bravado and a sense of danger walking the streets were prime motivating factors for young people who carried knives.

Official figures lay bare the scale of the problem. In London alone, the number of knife or sharp instrument offences recorded by the police rose to more than 15,016 in 2023-24.

“We’d really like to scale across the U.K. and we’ve even talked about potentially going global,” Mr. Wintour said.

Published - September 23, 2024 09:05 am IST