Police failing to track the true scale of knife crime
THE true extent of knife crime could be worse than previously thought because police are failing to properly record it, the Home Office has admitted.
The Government’s Serious Violence Strategy, which was published yesterday, discloses that police forces in England and Wales do not measure violent knife crime in the same way as other offences such as robbery and burglary.
It means that the true scale of violence involving knives may have gone under-reported for almost a century, after experts confirmed that officers had been measuring other crimes in more detail since 1927.
Most crimes are recorded with specific codes, but to record a knife crime, an individual officer must read through all reports and determine whether any of them involved a knife, which in turn relies on police manutally noting this at the time of the offence.
The strategy document concedes “this doesn’t always happen perfectly” because police resources are stretched and can be put to better use “preventing or catching offenders” instead.
Figures show that there has been an increase of 68.2 per cent over four years in the number of people recorded in possession of an article with a blade or point, an offence for which there is a crime code.
Last year, there were 14,171 incidents of someone being caught with a knife.
However, the police do not count possession as a serious crime and do not officially record violent knife offences under other crime codes, such as for robbery. It means possession is the only knife offence to be recorded using the official code system, with other knife crime figures based on the less reliable method of police “flagging” the offences manually.
The document, presented by Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, at a press conference in London yesterday, stated: “Crimes are currently recorded via a coding system. Burglary has a code, robbery has a code, but certain types of crime are flagged rather than having a code. Knife crime is one example.
“A robbery with a knife is classed as a robbery. Robbery is the offence, not knife crime. The fact that it was carried out with a knife has to be flagged separately.
“In practice this doesn’t always happen perfectly for good reasons. Flagging crimes requires police resource that could be spent instead on preventing or catching offenders.”
The document later adds that “an individual” must go through and determine whether a knife has been involved in a crime. The Home Office is testing computer software which will automatically record crimes that involve a knife, removing the need for a police officer to do this manually.
However, the scheme has yet to be introduced nationwide.
It raised questions yesterday about whether police had enough funding to tackle the range of issues they faced, after it emerged that leaked Home Office analysis suggested that the number of officers on the street could have an impact on crime rates.
Ms Rudd said it was up to police forces to hire extra officers if they needed to, as she said “there are areas where police forces can do more to help themselves”, including becoming more efficient and using new technology to make their job easier.
Denying that lack of funding was the problem, she said: “As tempting as a blue versus red spat can sometimes be, the safety of our neighbourhoods is just too important and we cannot afford to be distracted by party politics.
“I want to hear some solutions from the Opposition ... rather than just the constant shouts of ‘cuts, cuts, cuts’.”
Since the Conservatives came to power, the number of police officers has fallen from 143,734 in March 2010 to 123,142 in March 2017, Home Office figures show. Labour has repeatedly focused on the reduction in numbers.
Asked by BBC Radio 4’s Today programme why she had not seen the leaked report, Ms Rudd said: “There are a lot of documents that go round the Home Office. We do a lot of work in this area.” Ms Rudd pointed out that the report said that the forces with the biggest cuts in police numbers did not have the largest rises in crime. Arguing that it was a “complex area” that was “not all about police numbers”, she said: “You cannot arrest your way out of this.” The Government’s report also highlighted concerns that online retailers were not doing enough to stop young people buying knives online, despite a promised crackdown by the Government. In a test carried out by Trading Standards and the Metropolitan Police, 72 per cent of online retailers failed to verify the age of the purchaser at the point of accepting the order, and only 19 per cent of those went on to require further evidence and refused the sale when it was not produced. Overall, 15 out of the 21 retailers tested online failed, compared with 81 per cent of shops on the high street which passed the test.
Legislation will be announced later this year that will ban knives from being sold to under-18s, but this restriction will still rely on age checks and there are concerns that some websites are not taking the problem seriously enough.
The report acknowledged that some kitchen knives were used in violent gang crime, but it also found that young people were buying weapons online because they helped them appear more intimidating.
It stated: “Many other knives are bought especially for violent crime, often because of their intimidating appearance or their so-called status that they give to those who carry them.
“Such knives are kept out of sight in the home but are often left hidden in places such as parks or other public places where they can be picked up or left until they are needed.”