Failure to solve knife crime ‘emboldening’ offenders

Incidents involving blades are rising at the same time as charge rates are ‘dropping like a stone’

AS FEW as one in six crimes involving a knife, including murders and rapes, are being solved by police as the number of offences hits a record high in parts of England and Wales.

An analysis of police data by The Sunday Telegraph shows seven police forces saw knife crime reach a record high in the year ending March 2022.

But the proportion of knife offences resulting in a charge or other sanction fell by at least 50 per cent in the past six years despite the seriousness of the crimes and the risk posed to the public.

In London, just one in six offences involving a knife has been solved over the past two years.

Since September 2020, there have been 22,497 knife offences, but just 3,768 were sanctioned. In 139 of London’s 650 wards, this dropped to just one in 10 knife offences and none have been sanctioned in 50, according to the first analysis of its kind.

Harvey Redgrave, chief executive of Crest Advisory, a crime and justice consultancy, said it was “increasingly impossible” to ignore the “declining effectiveness” of law enforcement witnessed by charging rates “dropping like a stone” since 2016. Only 6 per cent of robberies, for example, resulted in an offender being charged.

“The Government has made much of tougher mandatory sentencing for offenders. However, with so few crimes being detected and sanctioned, offenders are emboldened,” said Mr Redgrave.

He cited the erosion of neighbourhood policing, longer police response times – which made it harder for detectives to exploit the first “golden hour” when evidence was fresh – and the loss of experienced officers as factors leading to lower-quality investigations.

Ministers and police chiefs have pledged to get back to basics of faster response times, investigating and solving crimes supported by an uplift of an extra 20,000 police officers.

However, there are still victims left ruing the loss of life and property from knife crime. Abubakarr Jah and his wife Hawa Deen lost their son, Junior, 18, in April 2021 when he was shot, stabbed and left to die outside his family home in Custom House, east London.

His older brother, Ahmed, had been murdered just 50 yards away four years before, aged 21. He was stabbed in the heart and died within minutes.

No one has yet been charged over either killing, although 12 people were been arrested and released under investigation in connection with the murder of Junior. The family have moved from their home, which is boarded up.

In the year ending March 2022, there were 45,391 knife crime offences in England and Wales – a 42 per cent increase on the previous year, but below the 55,078 recorded in the year ending March 2020.

Knife possession offences also hit a record high in the year ending March 2022, with 24,546 offences – up from the previous record of 23,239 in March 2020. Yet the proportion of knife possession offences resulting in a charge have nearly halved from 63.7 per cent in 2015-16 to 36.4 per cent in 2021-22

The proportion of knife possession cases with no suspect has increased from 5.8 per cent to 16.3 per cent.

In London, the proportion of knife offences that have been solved has fallen from 24.1 per cent in 2016 to 16.4 per cent, one in six.

Graham McNulty, the Met’s deputy assistant commissioner and the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for knife crime, said: “We can’t tackle this alone. This is a societal issue and requires a whole system approach.”

‘We can’t tackle this alone. This is a societal issue and requires a whole system approach’