Journal article
Epidemiology of knife carrying among young British men
- Abstract:
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Purpose
Knife carrying has caused considerable public concern in the UK. But little is known of the epidemiology and characteristics of men who carry knives. We investigated associations with socioeconomic deprivation, area-level factors, and psychiatric morbidity.
Methods
Cross-sectional surveys of 5005 British men, 18–34 years, oversampling Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) men, lower social grades, and in London Borough of Hackney and Glasgow East. Participants completed questionnaires covering violent behaviour and psychiatric morbidity using standardised self-report instruments. Socioeconomic deprivation measured at small area level.
Results
Prevalence of knife carrying was 5.5% (4.8–6.9) and similar among white and BME subgroups. However, prevalence was twice the national rate in Glasgow East, and four times higher among Black men in Hackney, both areas with high levels of background violence and gang activity. Knife carrying was associated with multiple social problems, attitudes encouraging violence, and psychiatric morbidity, including antisocial personality disorder (AOR 9.94 95% CI 7.28–13.56), drug dependence (AOR 2.96 95% CI 1.90–4.66), and paranoid ideation (AOR 6.05 95% CI 4.47–8.19). There was no evidence of a linear relationship with socioeconomic deprivation.
Conclusion
Men who carry knives represent an important public health problem with high levels of health service use. It is not solely a criminal justice issue. Rates are increased in areas where street gangs are active. Contact with the criminal justice system provides opportunity for targeted violence prevention interventions involving engagement with integrated psychiatric, substance misuse, and criminal justice agencies.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, 642.2KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1007/s00127-021-02031-x
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology More from this journal
- Volume:
- 56
- Issue:
- 9
- Pages:
- 1555–1563
- Publication date:
- 2021-01-27
- Acceptance date:
- 2021-01-06
- DOI:
- ISSN:
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0933-7954
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1194034
- Local pid:
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pubs:1194034
- Deposit date:
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2021-09-11
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Coid et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2021
- Rights statement:
- ©2021 The Author(s). Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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