A Flood of Warnings

Is Britain in the grip of a knife crime epidemic?
Analysis by Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor

The weekend murders of two more teenagers stabbed to death continue a gruesome trend that has been apparent throughout the year.

In London alone, more than a dozen young men have died in knife attacks.

Every week brings another story of a teenage life cut short by a blade-wielding killer.

But it is not clear that there are any more such homicides than there used to be.

Until recently, police did not keep a separate tally of crimes involving knives as opposed to other weapons.

Official statistics show homicides using a sharp instrument - but many of these are domestic murders.

It is difficult to distinguish how many teenagers are included in the death toll.

Ministers routinely claim that crime is down. But violent offences have gone up and there are signs that more young men are carrying knives because they fear for their own safety.

A study published in the summer by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (CCJS) at King's College London suggested that the occasions in which a knife was used in a successful mugging have soared, from 25,500 in 2005 to 64,000 in the year to April 2007.

It showed that knives were used in one in five muggings, twice the frequency reported two years ago.

Some criminologists claim that young people have always carried knives and that the situation is no worse than it was in, say, the 1950s.

Yet homicides and woundings were far lower 50 years ago. If youngsters carried knives then, they did not use them as often as now.

The CCSJ, again without much evidence, said young people were carrying knives less than they did in, the 1990s, while acknowledging a surge over the past two years.

This claim of a fall since the mid 1990s is based on an analysis of the British Crime Survey, which is the Government's favoured measure of offending but which is, in many ways, flawed.

It does not, for instance, survey the under-16s, many of whom are the victims and perpetrators of recent knife crimes.

Homicide figures suggest a rise in a willingness to use knives, though the circumstances are not spelled out.

In 1997, there were 200 homicides involving "sharp instruments" - knives and bottles.

In 2005, of the 820 homicides in 2005 in England and Wales, 236 - or 29 per cent - were with a knife or other sharp instrument.

As with gun crime, there is concern about the increasingly young age at which people admit carrying knifes, in part to feel "safer."

The use of illegal knives is higher for young men from ethnic minority backgrounds and, invariably, from inner city areas.

By far the most common way in which people are murdered in the poorest areas in Britain is through being cut with a knife, or a broken glass or bottle.

The latest murders will invariably prompt calls for tougher laws.

Yet there is already an abundance of legislation in this area.

The first was the 1953 Prevention of Crime Act, which made it unlawful to have an offensive weapon in a public place. That was followed in 1959 by the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act banned the carrying, manufacture, sale, purchase, hire or lending of flick-knives and "gravity knives".

The Criminal Justice Act 1988 contained a list of prohibited martial arts-style weapons and made it an offence to carry an article with a blade or sharp point in a public place.

The Offensive Weapons Act 1996, brought in after the murder of Philip Lawrence, the London headmaster, made it illegal to sell knives to children under 16.

The Knives Act 1997 prohibited the marketing of combat knives.

The Violent Crime Reduction Bill 2006 banned the sale of knives to anyone under 18 and increased the penalty for possession of a knife with intent to cause harm from two years to four years.

In recent years, ministers have responded to calls for action with knife amnesties.

The last produced 90,000 knives - representing just 0.0041 per cent of the total available in the country.