Reading in the Guardian this morning about the Government’s proposed new measures for dealing with knife crime (in England only, I think) brought home to me just how much things have changed since I was a teenager.

The guidelines, which aim for a tougher response to those found carrying knives had previously recommended that young people under 18 found carrying knives should only be cautioned rather than arrested and charged. Now, however, there is to be a presumption of prosecution for 16 and 17 year olds found with knives.

Understandably, in the light of the amount of media coverage and public awareness of knife crime over recent years (there is a perception that knife crime has increased – though not having seen hard figures, I’m not sure if it actually has) possession of a knife in public has become quite a serious thing.

This represents quite a big change, not just in perception, but in what is now deemed acceptable or safe. When I was a teenager, my parents actually bought me a knife, a sheath knife, for my birthday. It had a bone handle (I think) and a (very sharp) blade of about 3 1/2 to 4 inches and I could attach it to my belt. Several of my friends had similar knives which their parents too knew about, and sanctioned their use. It was all above board – and we took them pretty much everywhere with us (except to school, I seem to remember).

We lived in a quiet, safe, English rural backwater and our knives weren’t for fighting or protection or to make us feel safe – we never thought of that,. Rather, they were for those important things that teenaged boys living in the country at that time needed to be able to do – stripping bark from sticks and branches, cutting twine when we bound together logs to make rafts and bridges over ditches and streams, skinning small animals like rabbits (we never actually did this, but it was an important reason for carrying a knife!), cutting up our picnic sandwiches and hundreds of other really useful things. It never occurred to us to use them against each other and we were always mindful of how dangerous they could be if misused.

Now it seems, children carrying knives in such a way and for such purposes would be committing a criminal offence.

Whilst this is sad, I do understand the importance of fighting knife crime and, no doubt, a firm response is necessary.

What worries me a little is the ‘presumption to prosecute’. Clearly, there will be many situations where prosecution is entirely appropriate – where knives are being misused, aggressively and causing or threatening danger to others. But there will be other situations where a genuine mistake has been made – where the knife is being carried for an innocent reason, where a child has forgotten about the pen-knife in his pocket etc. I don’t know how often this happens, but surely it must.

In the olden days, as in so many other things, the police would have had discretion – if they though a genuine mistake had been made, or if it seemed that there was no intention to cause harm they would have been able to deal with it either, perhaps with a caution, of by just having a quiet word with the person concerned. That way, young people aren’t unnecessarily criminalised.

My sister and brother-in-law are police officers down in England. They are getting increasingly frustrated by the fact that they feel less and less able to exercise their discretion. More and more, there is pressure for them press charges in situations where they never would have done so in the past.

One example they gave was of the kind of situation where a group of children are playing a ball game, say, cricket, in a garden and the ball accidentally gets hit through the next-door neigbour’s window. In the heat of the moment, and in anger, the neighbour then phones the police to complain and the police come to investigate.

Before the police arrive at the scene, however, the child who broke the window comes to apologise, his parents agree to pay for any damage, the moment has passed, everybody is friends again and there is no need for the police.

When the police arrive, they are told, ‘sorry, I phoned you in the heat of the moment, but it’s all sorted out now and we don’t need to involve the police. Thank you for coming.’

Surely the natural response from the police here is, ‘OK, we’re glad you’ve sorted it out. Goodbye.’

However, my sister and brother-in-law tell me that, in those circumstances, they have to press charges. The fact that it’s totally unnecessary and, indeed, harmful, to do so, doesn’t seem to matter. If a crime has been reported (even in the heat of the moment), the police have to press charges. They’re not allowed to use their discretion. In the example given, the child who hit the cricket ball through his neighbour’s window would likely end up with a criminal record for what is, in fact, a normal, run of the mill, childish accident. Even though neither victim or police want to take it any further. Nobody has any choice.

The only way out of it is for the ‘victim’ to say they’d lied – that the boy had not hit a ball through their window after all. Then, of course, they would be charged with wasting police time.

I wonder how harmful all this is. If everything has to be so ‘black and white’, if there is no room for discretion. Instead of working alongside people for a safer, more secure and pleasant society, the police seem to have been put in a position in which they are forced, at times, to work over and against those whose side they are supposed to be on.