A decade on from Ben Kinsella's brutal murder has anything changed?

Ten-years-ago today a 16-year-old boy was chased by a group of men following a misplaced glance in a pub, cornered and stabbed 11 times in five seconds.

He died hours later in hospital.

The teenager who had been out in Islington, north London, celebrating the end of his GCSEs with friends was Ben Kinsella.

For a generation, Ben Kinsella's name has become synonymous with knife crime and the devastation of lives and families that follows in its wake.

In 2008 Ben was the 17th teenager to die violently that year, yet in 2018 there have been 51 fatal stabbings in London alone.

In the last year, knife crime has gone up by 22% across England and Wales.

ITV News spoke to young people in Birmingham who readily admitted to carrying knives, saying that the need to be armed was "simple".

"It's either kill or be killed," one said.

"If somebody backs out a knife to me, I'm going to have something bigger."

Others have told that a lack of fear of punishment is making young people more likely to carry weapons.

In a bid to stamp out what is fast becoming an epidemic, the Government announced a new crime strategy in April to make it harder for young people to arm themselves. 

Others say the issue lies with the way in which knife crime is policed.

Yet it is the people in the communities that are blighted by knives who feel that there remains a disconnect between the powerful and the powerless.

They argue that until politicians truly understand the reality of life in an area where the wrong type of look can leave you dead, little will be changed.

• Watch our feature video on the decade since Ben's death and the situation we find ourselves in 10 years on