ANOTHER week, another series of terrifying knife crime incidents.

Two teenage girls were threatened at knifepoint by a man who tried to steal a bag from them in Bexhill on Monday.

The man pointed a knife at the 17-year-olds but eventually ran away empty-handed, leaving the girls traumatised but uninjured.

It happened four days after great-grandfather Donald Lock was stabbed to death on the roadside in a horrific incident.

Both incidents fit a worrying trend of rising knife crime in the county, as reported on in the Argus last week.

Home Office statistics show 873 knife crimes were recorded in Sussex in the year up until March 2015.

The majority of these (715) were assault with injury and assault with intent to cause serious harm.

That is an average of more than two every day, and a significant increase on the 660 incidents the year before and 481 up to March 2013.

Stabbing has long been an easy, messy way for troubled men to harm each other. Yet the data suggests its popularity is on the rise.

As a proportion, Sussex is now approaching London levels of serious knife crime.

In 2013, a knife was used in 5 per cent of all selected serious offences in Sussex, whereas over the latest twelve months that has risen to 7 per cent.

In London by comparison, the use of a knife in all serious offences dropped from 11 per cent to 9 per cent during the same period.

In fact, over the latest year, knives were used more often in serious crimes in Sussex than in any other force area except West Yorkshire and London.

It is not clear whether the London and Sussex rates are connected.

However, experts have pointed to gangs being pushed out from London to the Home Counties because of police clamping down in the capital.

Some have also suggested a Home Office drive to reduce police stop and searches could have led to more knives being on the streets.

Meanwhile, tougher sentencing rules are now in place for knife possession as part of the government’s attempts to get serious about the problem.

Under new laws, adults convicted more than once of possessing a blade will be sent to prison for at least six months and up to four years.

Offenders age 16 and 17 will face a minimum four months detention and training.

The Government said that if the new rules were in place last year, 1,300 more people would have gone to prison.

But not everyone welcomes the changes.

The ongoing issue of overcrowded prisons and the prospect of judges’ authority being overruled by politicians are just some of the criticisms raised.

Experts point to mandatory six-month sentences for threatening with a blade in a public place or school premises or offensive weapon in a public place that are already in place.

Evidence on the impact of mandatory minimum sentences is mixed, according to a report to the Scottish Parliament last year.

But there have been no large-scale evaluations of mandatory sentencing for knife carrying in the UK.

But young people interviewed cite the risk of a prison sentence as a powerful disincentive not to carry a knife.

Realms of papers have been written on the subject, with some interesting ideas taken from abroad.

In Amsterdam, an eight-year plan to tackle the issue has been credited as more effective than political short-term thinking in England.

And in the American city of Boston, police are accountable to a mayor, as is now the case in London, enabling different authorities to work together more effectively.

It is clear that there are no quick fixes.

Brighton University criminology and public policy professor Peter Squires and colleagues are among thebright minds who have explored the problem.

In a 2009 report, looking specifically at young people,they found the use of weapons “was but one form of problematic behaviour”.

The report added: “It cannot be understood in isolation from the social, psychological and economic conditions. It is not clear whether we need to tailor interventions specifically to the issue of guns and knives.”