Figures released today from the British Crime Survey (BCS), compiled using interviews with the public, showed overall crime down a record 10%. Statistics published by the police, based on recorded offences, showed crime down 9%. So overall crime is down, but what about knife crime?
For the first time the offences recorded by police have been broken down to show the extent of knife crime. Police recorded 22,151 offences involving knives last year in England and Wales, including grievous bodily harm, attempted murder, woundings and robbery. As these are new figures they cannot be compared with previous years.
But the BCS has been recording violent incidents involving knives for years. In 2007-08 the number of such incidents was just under 130,000 a year.
That is 25% down on last year, when the figure stood just shy of 173,000, and well under half the 1995 peak of 340,000. The caveat is that the BCS does not include under-16s, a significant omission which the government is considering amending.
The apparent reduction will be hard to digest given the number of tragic stabbings this year. Already, 20 teenagers have been murdered in London, the majority of them stabbed to death.
Home Office chief scientific adviser, Professor Paul Wiles, said the overall crime figures represented the longest recorded period of falling crime in living memory, but added: "It is possible to have an overall decline in violence nationally while sometimes, and at the same time, having outbreaks of violent crimes in particular places, in particular concentrations and having increases in those places."
Other figures published recently suggest knife crime may be on the increase. Department of Health statistics show that almost 14,000 people were treated in hospital for stab wounds last year (446 of them aged 14 and under) - an increase of nearly 20% in five years.
Since Labour came to power in 1997, the number of people prosecuted for possessing knives has increased by 72%, to 7,699 in 2006.
So what is the truth? Has the impact of headlines about the horrific death of teenagers caused us to lose sight of an overall reduction in knife crime? Or is the BCS fatally flawed and painting a positive picture that is alien to you?
