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Crime: Knives

Answer

The Home Office has collected data on knife and sharp instrument offences since April 2007 via a special additional data collection. Data are therefore only available for two years.In 2007-08, the data collection covered the following offences: attempted murder, GBH and robbery. In 2008-09, the collection was expanded to include threats to kill, ABH, rape and sexual assaults. There were also changes in how both GBH with and without intent was recorded by forces following clarification of counting rules. Therefore, the figures between the two years are not comparable.There is a further reason why the figures are not fully comparable. Some forces in 2007-08 included, for technical reasons, a number of 'unbroken' bottle offences, which is outside the defined scope of the collection. For 2008-09, the majority of forces within England could supply data excluding unbroken bottles, with four Home Office forces still unable to remove them from their returns.The data for each police force in both England and Wales are published in 'Crime in England and Wales 2008-09' at the following link:"http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs09/hosb1109chap7new.xls"Data for 2007-08 are shown in Table 7.11 and data for 2008-09 are shown in Table 7.12.These figures do not include homicide, as these are collected from the separate Homicide Index. The 1998-99 to 2007-08 homicide data for each police force in England are shown in Table A.Homicide figures for 2008-09 are pre-announced to be published on 21 January 2010.

Table A: Offences currently recorded as homicide¹ involving the use of a knife or sharp instrument, 1998-99 to 2007-08²
Police force	1998-99	1999-2000	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05	2005-06	2006-07	2007-08
Cleveland	1	3	5	3	3	3	3	3	3	4
Durham	2	0	1	2	3	0	2	3	5	0
Northumbria	5	9	5	4	8	8	6	7	10	14
North East Region	8	12	11	9	14	11	11	13	18	18
Cheshire	3	0	0	3	2	5	3	7	4	2
Cumbria	1	5	3	1	2	1	1	0	0	3
Greater Manchester	14	10	14	23	19	17	15	11	13	15
Lancashire	2	1	15	4	10	12	11	1	4	13
Merseyside	11	6	14	3	12	10	14	10	10	9
North West Region	31	22	46	34	45	45	44	29	31	42
Humberside	2	2	2	3	5	8	3	1	7	6
North Yorkshire	0	1	0	0	0	1	3	2	0	0
South Yorkshire	3	4	4	6	7	2	7	6	3	8
West Yorkshire	12	7	8	11	13	7	13	11	12	13
Yorkshire and the Humber Region	17	14	14	20	25	18	26	20	22	27
Derbyshire	1	2	1	4	2	3	2	2	3	1
Leicestershire	1	0	4	2	4	9	3	3	5	3
Lincolnshire	1	2	0	1	2	2	0	0	3	3
Northamptonshire	2	1	3	3	5	1	0	6	6	4
Nottinghamshire	6	5	4	6	3	6	6	7	7	3
East Midlands Region	11	10	12	16	16	21	11	18	24	14
Staffordshire	4	2	0	1	0	3	3	2	5	3
Warwickshire	2	1	0	1	2	2	3	1	5	2
West Mercia	3	1	3	5	2	5	3	0	3	1
West Midlands	16	15	9	19	17	22	21	22	15	15
West Midlands Region	25	19	12	26	21	32	30	25	28	21
Bedfordshire	2	1	2	7	1	1	4	3	3	3
Cambridgeshire	1	4	0	1	2	5	2	2	2	4
Essex	5	9	2	10	7	5	0	6	9	3
Hertfordshire	1	5	4	3	4	4	5	3	6	3
Norfolk	5	2	4	1	0	3	1	1	3	3
Suffolk	0	0	3	2	0	2	2	3	2	2
East of England Region	14	21	15	24	14	20	14	18	25	18
London, City of	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0
Metropolitan Police	52	68	69	68	68	61	62	57	70	78
London Region	52	68	69	68	68	61	62	57	71	78
Hampshire	3	5	5	7	10	3	7	4	7	7
Kent	3	8	4	10	6	4	4	7	6	5
Surrey	1	1	1	2	1	1	4	3	0	3
Sussex	4	5	5	6	9	3	9	4	3	3
Thames Valley	7	8	3	9	13	3	6	7	8	6
South East Region	18	27	18	34	39	14	30	25	24	24
Avon and Somerset	5	5	3	4	4	4	4	2	4	6
Devon and Cornwall	6	1	5	6	2	3	10	4	5	6
Dorset	1	1	3		3	6	0	0	2	2
Gloucestershire	1	3	0	3	3	2	2	0	2	0
Wiltshire		1	0	3	2	2	3	1	1	2
South West Region	13	11	11	16	14	17	19	7	14	16
England	189	204	208	247	256	239	247	212	257	258
¹ As at 5 January 2009; figures are subject to revision as cases are dealt with by the police and by the courts, or as further information becomes available.
² Offences are shown according to the year in which police initially recorded the offence as homicide. This is not necessarily the year in which the incident took place or the year in which any court decision was made.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

503 c131-4W; 306464

Session

2009-10

Subjects

Crime Knives

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk