The statistics on knife crime in England and Wales make for stark reading. In 2024, knife-related offences reached the highest level since records began in 1946. The victims are overwhelmingly young men, predominantly from deprived communities, and often known to services before the attack that kills or seriously injures them.
Who Is Most at Risk
The homicide data is consistent: young men aged 16–24, living in areas of high deprivation, with prior contact with the youth justice system, are dramatically overrepresented among both perpetrators and victims.
The overlap between those two categories — perpetrators who are also recent victims, victims who will become perpetrators — is one of the most important features of serious youth violence.
What Works: The Evidence
Violence reduction units — pioneered in Glasgow and now operating in several English cities — take a public health approach to violence, treating it as a contagion with social determinants rather than simply a criminal justice problem. Glasgow's murder rate fell by 70% in fifteen years following the introduction of its approach.
The Violence Reduction Unit model involves intervention at the individual level (mentors, diversion programmes), the community level (environmental changes, addressing local grievances), and the systemic level (improving school engagement, housing stability, family support).
What Doesn't Work
Stop and search, without accompanying targeted intervention and community trust, does not reduce knife crime and damages police-community relations in ways that impede other crime prevention.
