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Written question asked by Lord Coaker (Labour) on Thursday, 3 March 2011, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 7 March 2011. It was answered by James Brokenshire (Conservative) on Thursday, 10 March 2011 on behalf of the Home Office.

Knives: Crime

Question
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what recent estimate she has made of the level of (a) knife crime and (b) homicide by use of a knife by people aged under 20 years in (i) London, (ii) England and (iii) Wales.
Answer

The Home Office collects data on offences involving the use of a knife or sharp instrument from the police forces of England and Wales via a special additional data collection. This collection does not contain data on victims or suspects and, therefore, it is not possible to break the data down by age of suspect.However, homicide data collected via the Homicide Index can be broken down by age of suspect. The Homicide Index is a record level database containing information on each homicide recorded by the police in England and Wales. Data are provided in Table A.

Table A: Homicide by sharp instrument offences currently recorded by the police in England and Wales¹ where the suspect was aged under 20 years, 2009-10
Area Number of homicides
London² 12
England 28
Wales 3
England and Wales 31
¹ Excluding British Transport Police.
² London includes Metropolitan and City of London Police.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
45121; 524 c1209-10W
Session
2010-12
Subjects
Crime Knives
Contains statistics
Yes
Link
View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk