According to one study published yesterday, 60 people are stabbed or mugged at knifepoint every day while the number of knife murders has gone up by 30 per cent since 1997.?That provides all the “perspective” we need on ministerial claims of falling violence.

Apart from the climate of denial, there is also the refusal to blame young thugs for their actions.?Even the most vicious gangsters are portrayed as victims, supposedly compelled to turn to violence because of poverty, inequality, boredom or, most absurd of all, “low self-esteem”.

The answer, therefore, is not to punish them but to provide more support through funding, activities and counselling. But this points again to the moral sickness at the heart of the political elite, where all sense of right and wrong has disappeared.

Then there is the Govern­ment gimmickry, hollow gestures as a substitute for real action.?Tomorrow, a phalanx of ministers led by the embarrassingly ineffective Home Sec­retary Jacqui Smith will launch Labour’s grandly titled Youth Crime Action Plan.

Under it, knife carriers will be forced to go to hospital casualty units to see stabbing victims and the potential consequences of their behaviour. This is a ludicrous idea. Gangsters already glory in violence, as they frequently demonstrate in their fixation with blood-soaked video games and gangster rap.?

We need an entirely new approach based on getting genuinely tough with young offenders. We are constantly told by ministers that “there are no quick fixes” but that is just a counsel of despair. The Government could immediately take three steps which would have a far more dramatic effect than any hospital visit.

The first would be to compel judges to pass rigorous sentences for knife crimes, including a minimum of five years for possession, 10 for wounding and life without parole for any murder.

The Government should abolish that useless quango the Sentencing Guidelines Council, which has become just another failing institution devoted to protecting the criminal classes, and instead impose mandatory terms. Then ministers should embark on a radical reform of the welfare state which in its present bloated structure provides perverse incentives for idleness and irresponsibility.

Thanks to the vast array of handouts, too many feckless men can now avoid both work and their duties towards their children, meaning that many youngsters are growing up without any male role models or masculine discipline.
Finally, precisely because of family breakdown, we should bring back National Service. Young men responsible for the vast majority of violent crime lack any sense of boundaries or fear of authority.

Many turn to gangs because, even in the most twisted fashion, such groups can provide that structure of respect, hierarchy and discipline which is missing from their lives.?It would be far better to channel that impulse in a positive way, through a spell of tough military or public service for everyone aged between 16 and 21.

National Service would address a crucial issue – the disturbing feminisation of the services which should be protecting the public.More than 90 per cent of young offenders are male, yet the organisations that deal with them are overwhelmingly female.

Nearly 70 per cent of probation officers and 67 per cent of state prosecutors are female, while both the teaching and the social work professions are dominated by women.

This means that wayward young men, growing up in fatherless households, are unlikely to ever come across a masculine figure in authority.

The female professionals, both by instinct and sub-Marxist training, only reinforce the message of victimhood, trying to display their empathy with young thugs instead of challenging them.

For a juvenile delinquent, a loud bawling out from a fearless sergeant major would do far more good than earnest expressions of sympathy from a nervous social worker.

It is no coincidence that Britain was a far less violent, more gentle society when we had National Service. Its abolition has paved the way for the triumph of brutality.