FOI ref: FOI-2024-2124
You asked
Date range: January 2014 to present
Data on the number of the following offences involving knives/bladed articles/sharp objects:
- Assault/violence with injury
- Murder
- Sexual assault
Data on the number of hospital admissions relating to the above
Could data please be split by:
- Area – England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland
- Police force area
- Gender
- Age
We said
Thank you for your request.
We primarily produce statistics from two main sources, the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and Police Recorded Crime (PRC). Statistics relating to offences involving knives, bladed articles, or sharp instruments are largely available from PRC data. These data are provided to us in aggregate form only by the Home Office. We do not hold individual records of police recorded offences.
Data on the number of assaults with injury, sexual assault and homicide offences involving a knife or sharp instrument recorded by the police in England and Wales for the past 10 years can be found in Tables F3 to F5 in our Crime in England and Wales: Other related tables.
Data on the number of knife or sharp instrument offences recorded by Police Force Area over the last ten years can be found in Table P6 of our Crime in England and Wales: Police Force Area data tables.
We hold and publish limited data on offences involving a knife or sharp instrument split by gender and age, the most relevant data available is in Table 11 of our Appendix tables: homicide in England and Wales which includes data on the number of offences currently recorded as homicide by a sharp instrument, by age and sex of the victim for the previous 10 years.
We also publish data on the number of hospital admissions in NHS hospitals in England and Wales for assault with sharp objects from the previous 10 years in Table F7 of our Crime in England and Wales: Other related tables. These data include a breakdown of admissions by age (0 to 24 years old versus those aged 25 years and over). Again, we only hold these data in aggregate form, so cannot carry out analysis based on other characteristics.
Our statistics only cover England and Wales. Information on crime in Scotland can be found on the Scottish government website or by contacting Justice_Analysts@gov.scot. Information on crime in Northern Ireland can be found on the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency website.
Data on police recorded crime figures are provided to us by the Home Office and they may be able to assist you further. The Home Office can be contacted using the following email: CrimeandPoliceStats@homeoffice.gov.uk.
Data on hospital admissions are based on published NHS data. You can contact them using their details on the following webpage: https://digital.nhs.uk/about-nhs-digital/contact-us. More data can also be found on their website using the following link: https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/supplementary-information.
If you have any other crime-related enquiries in the future, the ONS Centre for Crime and Justice can be reached at CrimeStatistics@ons.gov.uk.