knife crime research - news paper 'the telegraph'

The vagaries of UK knife crime statistics

Up to 60,000 young people, mostly male, may be stabbed and injured each year, the equivalent of more than 160 victims a day, according to a worst-case estimate for knife violence in England and Wales.

On the other hand, the figure may be around 22,000 each year for victims aged 10 - 25-year-old.

The different between the two estimates - derived from the questioning of around 600 under-25s about whether they had been "knifed or stabbed", and then extrapolated to the wider population, with all the statistical vagaries that entails - reflects the lack of precise information about the scale of knife crime in England and Wales.

It is also unclear whether knife crime is going down or up. Available official statistics suggest it has fallen since the mid-1990s, but the Government concedes the limited figures are far from reliable.

The death of Adam Regis, aged 15, at the weekend, and the stabbing of Kodjo Yenga, a 16-year-old, last week do little to dispel the perception that knife violence is a major problem, though it remains the case that knife murders - for which there are reliable figures - are rare