London stabbings add to 22% rise in knife crimes

LONDON - A 22-percent increase in crimes involving knives and sharp instruments was recorded in 2017 compared to a year earlier, crime figures for England and Wales revealed Thursday.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said 39,598 crimes involving knives or other sharp instruments were recorded in 2017, the highest number in the seven-year series for which comparable data are available.

Firearms offences rose by 11 percent to 6,604, but this compared with over 11,000 firearms offences recorded during the peak of the years ending March 2005 and March 2006.

The national rise in knife crime comes as London's Metropolitan Police tackle a wave of stabbings in the British capital this year. Figures for the first quarter of 2018 revealed more homicides in London than in New York. ONS said the number of knife crimes were highest in London and other metropolitan areas.

Around 2 percent of adults said they had been a victim of violent crime in 2017. This compared with around 5 percent of adults who were victims of violent crimes in the peak year of 1995.

Excluding victims of the London and Manchester terrorist attacks, there were 653 homicides in 2017, a 9 percent rise from the previous year. This follows the general upward trend seen in homicides since March 2014, said ONS.

Nearly 43,900 burglaries were recorded by the police in 2017, a 9 percent increase over 2016, but the volume was around half of that recorded in the year ending March 2003. There were also 74,130 robberies during the year, a 33 percent increase.

Commenting on the findings, ONS statistician Alexa Bradley said: "Today's figures show that, for most types of offence, the picture of crime has been fairly stable, with levels much lower than the peak seen in the mid-1990s. Eight in ten adults had not experienced any of the crimes asked about in our survey in the latest year."