Youth violence’s rise is deeply concerning, but mass hysteria doesn’t help

This Spring marks 20 years since the release of Bul­let Boy, Saul Dibb’s film about a young man called Ricky (played by Ash­ley Wal­ters) who tries to resist being dragged into a cycle of gun vio­lence after return­ing home from prison. It explores Ricky’s per­son­al bat­tles, but also his influ­ence over an impres­sion­able younger broth­er, Cur­tis, and the painful dis­ap­point­ment of his moth­er, Bev­er­ley, who tries to hold her fam­i­ly together. 

I watched Bul­let Boy on VHS at my friend’s house in year 10, dur­ing the same sum­mer hol­i­day that we had start­ed to ven­ture inde­pen­dent­ly into Lon­don prop­er from the west­ern Heathrow sub­urbs. Its ten­der, if shock­ing, por­trait of com­mu­ni­ty life in Hack­ney on the oth­er side of the cap­i­tal – the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Black British house­hold dynam­ics, the insti­tu­tion­al fail­ings that sub­tly pep­per scenes and the way it shows the ease with which inner-city pres­sure can over­whelm even the best inten­tions – has stayed with me ever since. 

Which is why I found it so pow­er­ful rewatch­ing it recent­ly at the British Film Insti­tute in South­bank as part of an event curat­ed by Clive Nwon­ka, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Film, Cul­ture and Soci­ety at UCL. After it end­ed, Nwon­ka sat with actor Clare Perkins (who plays Bev­er­ley) and an old­er, wis­er Ash­ley Wal­ters to talk about its legacy. 

Over the last two decades, Wal­ters has become one of the most recog­nis­able faces on British tele­vi­sion via his roles as drug deal­ing king pin Dushane in Top Boy and DI Luke Bas­combe in Ado­les­cence. He has there­fore played a unique hand in shap­ing pub­lic per­cep­tions about less­er-under­stood cor­ners of British soci­ety and youth cul­ture. Hear­ing him reflect on stage about how far he has come since his por­tray­al of Ricky – at the time, he had just left prison him­self after achiev­ing star­dom as a mem­ber of So Sol­id Crew – left me think­ing how, over the same peri­od, vio­lence affect­ing chil­dren and young peo­ple has shift­ed, too. 

• Read next: Bashy: ​“My dad kept me alive”

For hun­dreds of years we have been becom­ing a less vio­lent soci­ety. In the 13^th cen­tu­ry, there were about 20 – 25 homi­cides per 100,000 peo­ple in the UK and Ire­land. This reduced to a low of 0.3−0.5 homi­cides per 100,000 peo­ple in the 1930s to 1950s. Homi­cides increased over the lat­ter half of the 20^th cen­tu­ry, before decreas­ing again.

The trends since Bul­let Boy hit cin­e­ma screens are mixed. There was a peak in vio­lent offences com­mit­ted by chil­dren in 2007, then num­bers fell until 2017, which – as my book Cut Short explores on the ground in south Lon­don – saw anoth­er peak along­side soar­ing homi­cide rates before the pan­dem­ic hit. Wor­ry­ing­ly, the lat­est data shows anoth­er year-on-year increase. The num­ber of hos­pi­tal admis­sions for knife assault amongst 0 – 17 year-olds is up 9% com­pared to a year ago and 58% per­cent com­pared to a decade ago.

In oth­er words, it’s easy to assume from the hys­te­ria of social media and doom-mon­ger­ing of the tabloid press that things are always get­ting worse, but the pic­ture is com­pli­cat­ed. At the same time, there is still clear­ly so much to be con­cerned about.

Last year, the Youth Endow­ment Fund (YEF), the char­i­ty I work at, sur­veyed 10,000 teenagers across Eng­land and Wales about their expe­ri­ences of vio­lence. One in five report­ed being a vic­tim of vio­lence, of whom near­ly a third were a vic­tim more than five times. 16% admit­ted to being a per­pe­tra­tor, half of whom have been a vic­tim them­selves. 5% of teenagers have car­ried a weapon in the past year. All of this con­firms that there is a rel­a­tive­ly small but sig­nif­i­cant cohort of young peo­ple who face an extreme, reg­u­lar inter­ac­tion with violence.

Watch­ing Bul­let Boy now, I found the omnipres­ence of the same post-war urban con­di­tions that per­sist com­bined with the com­plete absence of smart­phones, which is almost unimag­in­able today, a strik­ing jux­ta­po­si­tion. Now, 70% of teenagers have seen real world vio­lence online, even though only 25% of them searched for it, sug­gest­ing that dig­i­tal plat­forms are push­ing vio­lent con­tent towards them. The impact of this extends far beyond the idle scroll of a screen. 80% of teenage chil­dren who encounter weapons-relat­ed con­tent on social media say it makes them feel less safe in their com­mu­ni­ties and 39% admit that it makes them more like­ly to car­ry a weapon them­selves. Near­ly two-thirds of teenagers who report com­mit­ting vio­lence in the past year say that social media played a role in their behaviour. 

Boys and girls expe­ri­ence vio­lence dif­fer­ent­ly. 21% of boys have been per­pe­tra­tors ver­sus only 11% of girls. Just under half of those in roman­tic rela­tion­ships have expe­ri­enced con­trol­ling or vio­lent behav­iour from their part­ner. And it is no secret that, over the last 20 years, hun­dreds of youth clubs have closed. But these ser­vices reach those who most need them: chil­dren who’ve been direct­ly affect­ed by vio­lence are twice as like­ly to attend one. Is it any sur­prise that the most vul­ner­a­ble teenagers – who, back when Bul­let Boy was filmed, would have had greater access to a safe space to be fed, guid­ed and cared for – are feel­ing their disappearance?

• Read next: We need to talk about seri­ous youth violence 

Beyond the data, some­thing else has shift­ed in 2025, too. These first months have fol­lowed a year of cam­paign­ing by Idris Elba against zom­bie knives, lead­ing to the use­ful (if insuf­fi­cient) fast-track of their ban, and the sub­se­quent air­ing of his BBC doc­u­men­tary, Our Knife Crime Cri­sis, in Jan­u­ary. This plonked arguably one of the most nuanced hours of tele­vi­sion about vio­lence affect­ing young peo­ple ever made in British liv­ing rooms at prime time. Two months lat­er, Ado­les­cence dropped on Net­flix, lift­ing the lid on how pub­lic ser­vices respond to vio­lent tragedies involv­ing chil­dren, break­ing view­er records and spark­ing a nation­wide con­ver­sa­tion about the dead­ly risks of unchecked online influ­ence, as well as the rise of vio­lence against women and girls.

Indeed, such an atten­tive land­scape is fer­tile soil for the seeds of change. YEF recent­ly launched the Safe pod­cast, a series of con­ver­sa­tions about vio­lence affect­ing young peo­ple with adults try­ing to stop it. In the first episode, I spoke to Pro­fes­sor Car­lene Firmin about her ground­break­ing con­cept of ​‘con­tex­tu­al safe­guard­ing’. In the sec­ond, I spoke to Justin Fin­layson, CEO of Lon­don-based music char­i­ty Unit­ed Bor­ders, about engag­ing with at-risk teenagers in the record­ing stu­dio. The aim is to make the best guid­ance about keep­ing chil­dren safe acces­si­ble to all. There will be six more episodes air­ing lat­er this year – hit sub­scribe to be kept in the loop.

Hold­ing these dia­logues with experts who have been doing the work for at least as long as Bul­let Boy has been in cir­cu­la­tion was a reminder to me that although it some­times feels like an insur­mount­able issue, vio­lence is pre­ventable. In solv­ing social prob­lems, we must pause to mourn, cri­tique and process loss, but also keep our efforts mov­ing for­ward to pro­tect hope. At the decade’s halfway point, with increas­ing divi­sion across British soci­ety and the world, we must decide: what lega­cy do we want to leave behind from the 2020s?

Cia­ran Tha­par is the host of the Safe Pod­cast, direc­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions at the Youth Endow­ment Fund and author of Cut Short. Fol­low him on Insta­gram.

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