How an anti-knife crime project 'saved' a young man's life

31 Dec 2025, 02:30 · Sky News

Corrie was just 13 when someone first pulled out a knife on him.

Now, he says, "even the sound of cutlery gets me".

"So if we're in a kitchen and there's cutlery shaking, my eyes are alert and I'm not cooling down. That's the PTSD I still hold today," he adds.

After a difficult childhood, alcohol dependency, and two years of being homeless, he says his life was saved when he met youth worker Bradley Stephenson at King's College Hospital.

Image: Corrie says even the sound of cutlery 'gets him'

Bradley works for Redthread, a charity funded by London's 'Violence Reduction Unit' (VRU), to embed youth workers in London's A&Es and Major Trauma Centres.

It is a project designed to support young people who have been the victims of violence or knife crime.

Corrie had actually been admitted for mental health issues, and the call came in right at the end of Bradley's shift. But that night, he agreed to meet the young man anyway.

Bradley explains their programme is all about diverting from the path of crime and violence: "Corrie didn't have money to find accommodation, so the only way he could make money would then be to commit crime.

"So my main support aim at first was finding him accommodation."

Image: Bradley Stephenson helped to find accommodation for Corrie

Today, Corrie is a changed man who has turned his life around and is committed to helping others.

"There were times where I might not have been the victim of the knife crime," he explains, "but I could have made someone else a victim of it - if they made me feel like I was in danger."

This is why, Bradley explains, the Violence Reduction Unit's future funding of projects like his is so important in the fight against knife crime.

Image: VRU director Lib Peck

The VRU was set up by the London mayor's office in 2019 to bring a 'public health' attitude to tackling violence.

"Homicides are down by a third since we were set up," the unit's director, Lib Peck, says, adding: "There are 14,000 less incidents of violence with injury and we know there's been a 43% percent reduction in young people admitted to hospital as a result of knife assault."

It sounds impressive, but as always, the true data is a little more complicated.

Homicides in London are indeed at their lowest level than at any point since 2003, and the total number of knife crimes recorded has also been (recently) falling - but only after a huge surge.

Knife crime offences are still more common now than they were two years ago.

There has been a slight reduction in the number of under-25s being injured by knives, but the numbers still show up to 25 young people being stabbed or wounded every single week.

And, while there's also been a reduction in the number of people hospitalised with knife wounds in London since 2018 - a year before the VRU formed - that actually fits the patterns of the national trend.

To better understand the work the VRU has been doing, we visited a custody suite in Brixton.

It's early in the day, but already a teenager has been arrested and is sitting in one of their cells waiting to be interviewed.

But also waiting to talk to them is a youth worker, funded (as in hospitals) by the VRU.

Image: Rachael Venables is shown a custody suite in Brixton

"The whole aim is to kind of divert the pathway that they may be heading down," explains Ian Patnelli, a youth engagement coordinator at Lambeth Council.

"We would seek to meet with them while they're in custody, use that as a reachable, teachable moment, and support them with areas that they may share with us on the day or that we might assess from information that we have once they're released."

So far, youth workers like Ian have reached 10,000 young people in these cells - offering help getting back into education, starting training or employment.

And a recent study found that 80% of the under 18s the VRU had helped didn't go on to reoffend within the next year.

Image: Youth worker Ian Patnelli speaks to youngsters being held in custody

But for Mark Rodney, who runs Project Lifeline in Croydon, the VRU fails to reach the most at-risk children. Their work is good, he tells me, but it doesn't deal with the real issues affecting the most dangerous, or endangered young people.

"These are children killing children," he stresses.

His project moves young people who are the most engaged in violence out of their communities to somewhere safer.

One recent example came after a local child was killed. "In the middle of the vigil a young child spoke to me and said that he's 'gonna be next'," Mark says.

Image: Mark Rodney works with social services to relocate children to somewhere safer

Knowing the child wouldn't want to engage with the authorities, Mark himself "went to that child's house, spoke to his mother, packed him up, packed up his stuff, put it in my car, took him, and then relocated him with help from social services".

And if he hadn't done this, what could have happened?

"Why wouldn't he pick up a knife and protect himself?" asks Mark. "Why wouldn't he? It's a chain reaction and these children are stuck in a vicious circle with no exits."

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Whatever the data shows, Lib Peck insists the VRU isn't complacent about the reality on the streets.

"We know that the number of people feeling safe doesn't correlate to the number of incidents reduced and we also know that for many people who've been affected by violence or indeed horrifically by murder, these are going to be of small comfort to them," she says.

"So there is a huge agenda for us to keep progressing. But it's you know, prevention is an important part of that package and I think the evidence that we've got today shows that."