knife crime research - press conference with Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson: Met records big increase in young people injured by knives on his watch

The numbers of crimes recorded by the Metropolitan Police where the victims were teenagers or young adults and injured by a knife rose by just over 30 percent in the second and third years of Boris Johnson's mayoralty compared with his first. The figures, which the Met has provided me with, show that "notifiable" offences of that type where the victim was aged between 13 and 24 totalled 1,594 in the financial year 2008/09, which coincided almost exactly with Boris's first year in power, then jumped to 2,076 in 2009/10 and remained at (precisely) that number in 2010/11. The majority of victims in all three years were teenagers, accounting for between 55 and 60 percent of each of the annual totals.

The Met's statistics for 13-24 year old victims of all types of knife crime during the three years in question, which include those where no injury was caused, also show an increase since the end of 2008/09. This category documents offences where the perpetrator was seen by the victim to have a knife or where possession of a knife was intimated. There were 5,923 such offences recorded by the Met against 13-24 year-olds in 2008/09, 6,460 in 2009/10 and 7,231 in 2010/11 – an increase of over 20 per cent. In each of the three years over 60 percent of these victims have been teenagers.

The same period has seen a small overall increase in all forms of "serious violence" offence against 13-24 year-olds. The number reported rose from 10,655 in 2008/09 to 11,020 in 2009/10 before falling to 10,749 in 2010/11. Within that category, the number of teenage victims rose consecutively year-by-year: from 6,142 in 2008/09 to 6,247 in 2009/10 and to 6,356 in 2010/11, while the trend for 20-24 year-olds initially went up from 4,513 to 4,773 before falling back to 4,393.

There is more encouraging news in the "most serious violence" category for the age group, which the Metropolitan Police Authority website says includes homicide and "child destruction", attempted murder, wounding,GBH and causing death by dangerous driving. This has shown consecutive annual falls from 5,197 in 2008/09 to 5,115 in 2009/10 and to 4,145 in 2010/11. There were slightly larger numbers of victims in their teenage years than aged 20-24 in all three years. The overall drop since 2008/09 has been fractionally more than 20 per cent. There has also been a small drop - from 30,972 to 29,626 - in the figure for all types of violent offences against 13-24 year-olds.

The increases in knife crime victims, injured and otherwise, have come against the backdrop of intensified efforts by the Met to combat serious violence by and against young people in the capital following Boris's election in May 2008. Operation Blunt 2 was launched straight after Boris's victory, with the Met introducing the use of metal-detecting arches at transport hubs and greatly increasing its stop-and-search activities.

A fortnight after becoming Mayor Boris visited a Blunt 2 operation in Elephant and Castle saying, "Everybody is shocked by the level of violence we are seeing, particularly towards young people in London and we must work as hard as we can together to reverse this dreadful trend."

Not all offences are reported to the police because some victims do not wish to inform the authorities or feel unable to do so. For example youths are often reluctant to report violence-related injuries due to fear of reprisal, because they wish to deal with the problem personally, because they have behaved criminally themselves, or because they lack confidence in the police. In addition, it is recognised that the level of under-reporting of crime may well be higher amongst ethnic minorities. Consequently, the actual extent of youth violence in London cannot be accurately established.

The figures also provide context for claims made recently by Boris about youth violence on his watch. In the section on young Londoners in hisannual report published in May he listed as highlights  that "youth violence fell by more than six per cent in 2010/11," and that "Over 11,000 knives have been taken off London's streets since 2008," but no mention was made anywhere in the report of any knife crime trend. It's important to note here that occasions when knives have been found as a result of a police search are not included in the Met statistics discussed above. Further down, the annual report acknowledges that "levels of the most serious youth crimes remain a real, and all too often tragic, concern."

Something else to bear in mind is that any rise in crime levels recorded by the police can to some degree reflect a greater willingness on the part of victims to report offences. On the other hand, it seems probable that not every violent offence against a young person comes to the attention of the police at all. Boris's own policy document on young people, published in November 2008, puts this very well (page 59):

It can, though, be safely inferred from the above that there is more rather than less violent crime committed against teenagers and young adults in London than the Met's figures are able to show. The precise significance of those figures is something readers might have views on.