Over the last year, Elba has met with the relatives of young people stabbed to death, detectives investigating homicides, young people who have carried knives and those diverted from violence, to understand the causes of the problem.
'That was it — I never saw my son again': meet the Londoners at the heart of the capital's knife crime epidemic Walking to the first interview for this project, I noticed a young boy sitting on a wall a few roads down from my north London flat.
It is a fear which can sometimes lie dormant, and then be lit ablaze when a particularly senseless tragedy hits the headlines, such as the killing of 15-year-old schoolgirl Elianne Andam, or 16-year-old Harry Pitman at the end of 2023.
Opposite him lay a sea of flowers, some wilting, others fresh, weather-worn cards, their rain-defeated ink fading into illegibility and candles laid out to form the initials ‘JH’.
In many ways, knife crime is a hyper-visible problem in London.
