“The correlation between rising exclusions and rising knife crime isn’t coincidence … if you’re excluded from school, you’re 200 times more likely to get caught up in a gang”.
Dame Louise Casey (King’s College London).
The UK is facing a deeply concerning trend: a sustained rise in knife crime. This complex issue, impacting communities across the country, demands urgent attention and multifaceted solutions. Like the synthetic opioid crisis, it represents a public safety emergency with devastating consequences.
The Scale of the Problem
Recent statistics paint a stark picture – there were nearly 50,000 serious knife crimes recorded in England from July 2023 to June 2024. This equates to around 960 knife crimes a week and over 130 knife crimes a day.
Whilst knife crime across England has decreased slightly (8.23%) in the last 5 years, some areas have seen a significant increase – the City of London has seen an alarming 73% rise in the last 5 years, whilst knife crime across Northumbria has risen by nearly 50% over the same time period.
Knife-crime and Young People
This worrying trend is particularly prevalent among young people. Many victims and perpetrators are teenagers, with a significant number of incidents occurring in schools and public spaces frequented by youth.
82% of all homicides amongst teenage victims involved a knife / bladed instrument, twice the number of knife-related homicides for victims of all ages.
These troubling statistics require a coordinated and multi-agency response across a variety of sectors including substance misuse, criminal justice, targeted youth support services, police and schools. It is through partnership working and integrated strategies that we can help reduce knife crime and serious violence, making communities safer and giving young people a brighter future.
Services such as Catch22’s ‘Kent County Lines and Gangs’ service work closely with children and young people, providing vital support aimed at reducing risk caused by gang involvement, county lines activity, criminal / sexual exploitation and prevention of serious youth violence.
Kent has recorded a 40% reduction in knife crime in the last 5 years.
|
Underlying Factors:
The causes of knife crime are complex and include poverty, social exclusion, limited opportunities and the influence of gang culture.
School exclusion also plays a significant part – removing children from a structured and supportive environment can leave them vulnerable to grooming into gangs and “easy targets for those who seek to coerce and criminally exploit them”. Early involvement in criminal activity often leads to long-term offending behaviour – this is evidenced by the fact that 8 out of 10 people in prison report being excluded from school at some point.
Addressing the Crisis: A Multi-Pronged Approach
The development of comprehensive multi-agency frameworks, bound by a shared strategy which key stakeholders can all contribute to, provides a fundamental component for addressing knife-crime and serious violence. Through the sharing of information, resources and best practices, this partnership approach ensures that efforts are aligned and mutually reinforcing.
One example of this approach has recently been launched in Northamptonshire. The Youth Violence Intervention Unit (YVIU) has evolved from the Community Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV) programme, and provides a package of tailored interventions to Young People impacted by knife-crime and / or criminal exploitation, in an attempt to ‘steer them away from violence and gang criminality’.
The YVIU works closely with schools, Youth Offending Teams, local authorities and police to deliver preventative interventions, as well as employ ‘ground-breaking data analysis techniques’ to identify ‘at risk’ cohorts of children and young people across Northamptonshire, whose behavioural indicators make them vulnerable to being victims or perpetrators of violent crime.
|
|
Community Involvement
Ultimately, we all have a part to play in the fight against knife crime, and engaging the wider community is also crucial. Parents / guardians, teachers, local businesses, faith leaders and community leaders can all have a positive role in creating a supportive environment for young people where they can feel safe and protected, and less vulnerable to recruitment to county lines gangs. Community forums and public awareness campaigns can help mobilise collective action and foster a culture of zero tolerance towards violence.
|
 |
|
|
The role of data in tackling knife crime
Data can play a critical role in tackling knife crime. Accurate data collection and analysis enable criminal justice agencies, community youth services, violence reduction units and policymakers to identify crime hotspots, spot trends and identify ‘at risk’ client cohorts.
Sharing data across agencies improves transparency and can help engender trust across those communities most affected by knife crime. When communities are informed, they can become more involved, thus increasing collaboration and improving outcomes.
|
|
How can ILLY help?
Knife crime and violent offences are recorded by various agencies, including police, hospitals, and emergency services, each with different perspectives. This variation in data collection can make it challenging to compare incidents over time and assess the effectiveness of interventions.
ILLY Systems partners with many services across the UK, including youth substance misuse programs, criminal justice teams and organisations supporting young people affected by gangs and exploitation.
Our LINKS CarePath case management system allows workers to record interventions and generate detailed reports, tracking activity at both individual and local authority levels. The system can also be tailored to capture and share knife crime data across multiple teams and districts.
For over a decade, ILLY has partnered with services to drive positive change through collaboration and innovative technology. We are committed to further developing our tools to support those impacted by knife crime. By working together, we can help reduce violence, create safer communities, and offer young people a brighter future.
|
020 4566 5727 
clientservices@illycorp.com
