london
—
Last weekend’s horrific train stabbing, which left nine people with fatal injuries, has once again focused attention on Britain’s knife crime problem.
A 32-year-old British man has been charged with 10 counts of attempted murder in connection with an attack on a train traveling through central England to London on Saturday night. He has not yet entered a plea.
British politicians condemned the attack, with Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood telling the House of Commons on Monday that knife crime was “taking too many lives in our country”.
Successive governments have vowed to tackle knife crime, but it remains a significant problem in a country where access to firearms and other weapons is tightly controlled.
According to the Office for National Statistics, a total of 51,527 knife crimes were recorded in England and Wales, excluding Greater Manchester, in the 12 months to June 2025 (data is recorded differently in Manchester). According to the ONS, 196 of these crimes were murders.
In particular, the total number of knife crimes recorded in the year to June 2025 fell by 5% compared to the previous year.
The issue of knife crime is a “serious public concern” but “it should not be a cause for moral hysteria”, Ian Overton, executive director of the non-governmental organization Action Against Armed Violence, told CNN on Monday.
According to the ONS, there were 570 murders in England and Wales in the year to March 2024, of which 262 were committed using a sharp instrument such as a knife. The ONS said the most commonly used tool in these murders was a kitchen knife. Only 22 of the victims were killed by gunfire.
The ONS said a total of 64 teenagers aged between 13 and 19 were murdered in the period, 83% of whom were killed with knives or other sharp instruments.
Hospital data can also help understand the extent of the problem, as not all knife crimes are reported to the police.
NHS England data shows that between April 2024 and 2025, there were 3,494 cases in England where patients were admitted to hospital due to assault with sharps. Almost 90% of patients treated were male, and 16% of patients were under 18 years of age.
Scotland and Northern Ireland record crime separately from England and Wales. There were a total of 28 sharps murders in Scotland between 2023 and 2024, and four in Northern Ireland during the same period.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a total of 1,704 people died from “cuts” or “stick wounds” in the United States in 2023. According to the National Safety Council, a U.S. civil service organization, this type of crime occurs as a result of “an incision, cut, puncture, or puncture by a sharp or sharp instrument, weapon, or object.”
According to the ONS, the murder rate in England and Wales for the year from March 2023 to 2024 was 9.5 per million people. The rate is much higher in the United States, with 68 homicides per million people in 2023, according to the CDC.
The European Union, with a population of about 450 million people, recorded 3,980 intentional homicides in 2023, according to the EU’s statistics agency Eurostat.
In a press conference released in October, the Association of British Local Governments said knife crime was a “multifaceted problem that cannot be solved by policing alone”.
Economist Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay, director of the Center for Crime, Justice and Policing at the University of Birmingham, told CNN on Monday that deprivation, mental health issues, exclusion from school and struggles with family members can all contribute to involvement in knife crime.
Ten years ago, the majority of knife crimes committed by young people were gang-related, but that is no longer the case, James Alexander, an associate corporate fellow in criminology at London Metropolitan University, told CNN.
“It was really predictable,” Alexander said. “Young people these days can’t predict that. You’ve got people getting involved in knife crime, people with no previous convictions, no indication (that they might commit knife crime), who get arrested for carrying a knife or being stabbed or stabbed,” he said.
Because violence, or the threat of violence, is so pervasive in today’s society, many young people carry knives out of fear for their safety, Alexander said. If they feel threatened, they will resort to using a knife rather than fleeing or fighting unarmed, often with devastating results.
Some young people who grow up in a “culture where violence is tolerated” become violent adults, Alexander said.
“As young people who don’t receive support grow up, they are often less developed than they would have been if they had been supported. And they continue to have violent tendencies into adulthood, which is a big concern for many people.”
During the campaign for the 2024 UK parliamentary elections, the Labor Party, which is currently in power, pledged to “halve knife crime over 10 years”.
The Home Office said that since Prime Minister Keir Starmer took office, “nearly 60,000 knives have been removed from the streets of England and Wales through new knife surrender schemes and police operations”.
Weapons such as so-called zombie knives and ninja swords have also been banned, and age verification checks on online knife sales and deliveries have been strengthened, the Home Office said. This year’s progress includes a 5% reduction in all knife crime, including an 18% reduction in knife murders, the Home Secretary told MPs on Monday.
But Armed Violence Action’s Mr Overton said while the crackdown would help combat knife crime, “this is not just a police issue”.
“Cuts to youth and mental health services, poverty, exclusion and the exploitation of children by drug networks are all helping to create the conditions for violence,” he said. “The real work is in prevention through education, community investment, and early intervention.”
One example of effective prevention is Operation Divan, a police-led initiative aimed at stopping young people from carrying knives in England’s North Yorkshire county, Bandyopadhyay said.
Under the initiative, if there is a concern that a young person may be handling a knife, police will work with local services to discuss the dangers of knives with the young person. This will also help authorities learn more about why young people handle knives.
Mr Bandyopadhyay said there was a “significant opportunity” for young people to make an early departure from knife crime through “voluntary educational interventions”.
Mr Alexander, of London Metropolitan University, said he had evaluated “quite a number of amazing interventions” when it came to knife crime, but that they were often only implemented for a few years due to lack of funding.
“The government is doing something very practical” when it comes to cracking down on the sale of sharp weapons, Alexander said. “But actually, if you look at a lot of young people, I think they are… pretty damaged young people.”
“They need support, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be done by a therapist. All they need is a space where they can be kids and feel safe without the need for knives,” he continued.
