FOI reference: FOI-2024-2292
You asked
Please provide statistics on knife crime by ethnicity and geography.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry. Unfortunately we do not hold data at the levels you have requested. We publish statistics on crime from two main sources: the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and Home Office police recorded crime (PRC). Our data focuses on crime as it is experienced by victims, we do not generally publish statistics on offenders.
Police recorded crime provides a better measure than the CSEW of higher-harm but less common types of violence, such as those involving a knife or sharp instrument (knife-enabled crime). Please note, this category does not solely cover knives but other sharp instruments such as scissors or syringes too. See our User Guide to Crime Statistics for more information. The lowest level of geography we hold for offences involving knives or sharp instruments is police force area. We do not hold data on knife or sharp instrument offences broken down by the race of the victim or offender.
Tables P5-P7 of our Police Force Area data tables provide the number and rates of offences involving knives or sharp instruments recorded in the police force areas of England and Wales.
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.
Worksheets 8-12 of our homicide in England and Wales appendix tables provide some more granular data on offences currently recorded as homicide by sharp instrument such as the sex of the victim and the type of weapon used however, these are not broken down by geography or ethnicity of the victim.
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.
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.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) are primarily responsible for data on offenders. They publish Statistics each quarter which may be of help to you. Additionally, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) publish overall prosecution figures and police referrals as well as charging rates in their CPS quarterly data summaries which may be of use. If you have any questions, the Ministry of Justice may be able to help you further and can be contacted at data.access@Justice.gov.uk