The Office for National Statistics said that 12,786 knife offences were carried out in the capital over the 12 months to the end of March this year. The total compares with a figure of 11,031 for the comparable period a year earlier and represents an increase of 16 per cent.
The main reason for the rise was a surge in knife-point robberies which were up by nearly a third, at 7,389, over the 12 months to the end of March, and up 31 per cent on the total of 5,627 the previous year.
Knife-point rapes or other sexual assaults were also significantly higher with 220 such crimes recorded in the latest year covered by today’s statistics, compared with 189 over the previous 12 months. Threats to kill with a blade also rose from 949 to 1,015.
Knife killings in the capital were down from 76 a year ago to 63 in the latest 12 month period, however, and attempted murders with a blade also fell from 59 to 54. Offences of assault with injury and attacks with intent to cause serious harm, which together totalled 4,045, were also slightly below the previous year’s tally.
Those statistics will provide the Met and Mayor Sadiq Khan, who is expected to come under pressure over his law and order record in the campaign for City Hall, with some reassurance that police efforts to bear down on knife crime are having some impact.
But the statistics — which follow the knife murders of four London teenagers in recent weeks, including the fatal stabbing of 16-year-old Rahaan Ahmed Amin — will prompt fears of a resurgence in blade offending in the capital.
Concern will also be heightened by the fact that London’s 16 per cent increase in blade offending over the past year is far greater than the five per cent increase registered in England and Wales as a whole.
Today’s figures show that for the two countries there were 50,489 blade offences in the year to the end of March, meaning that London accounted for about a quarter of the total.
Further figures published today by the statisticians show that sexual offences recorded by police in London fell by one per cent from 25,188 in the year to the end of March 2022 to 24,958 over the following 12 months.
Rapes reported to the Met or City of London Police were also down with the latest annual total up of 9,132 representing a two per cent fall on the 9,325 recorded the previous year.
The statistics came as London Mayor Sadiq Khan claimed that the cost of living crisis could undo progress in reducing violence in the capital as “spiralling costs … push more and more people into poverty and leave young people unable to access activities and at greater risk of exploitation.”
A City Hall press release conveying his warning also claimed that “knife and gun crime, homicides and burglary have all fallen since 2016 as a result of the Mayor’s relentless focus on tackling violent crime and its underlying causes, and the hard work of police officers,”
However, today’s figures from the Office for National Statistics show that City Hall’s claim that knife crime is lower than in 2016 is inaccurate.
They show that the latest total of 12,786 knife offences in the capital over the 12 months to the end of March is far higher than the comparable figure for the year to the end of March 2016 when 9,086 knife offences were recorded by police.
The latest annual total is also higher than the 11.231 blade offences reported in London in the year to the end of March 2017, although it is lower than the pre-pandemic total of 14,714 knife crimes in the year to the end of March 2020.
