Knife crime and escalation: what the evidence says, and what practice tells us

Knife crime remains one of the most visible and emotive challenges facing policing in England and Wales. But behind the headlines, what does the evidence actually tell us about who is at risk of escalating from carrying a knife to using one - and what does that mean for how policing and partners respond? That was the focus of the tenth episode of SEBP's Easier Said Than Done webinar series, delivered in partnership with the Youth Endowment Fund on 16 June 2026.

The panel brought together Prof. Simon Harding, Director of the National Centre for Gang Research and Criminology Services, and Detective Inspector Paul Connelly of the NPCC National Knife Crime Centre, with the discussion chaired by SEBP Chief Operating Officer Matthew Bland.

Understanding the landscape

Simon opened by situating knife crime across three broad settings: the domestic environment, the night-time economy, and public space, with social media increasingly operating as a fourth. Alongside this, he noted a significant and underreported development in the data: knife crime offences in England and Wales fell from around 54,500 in 2024 to just over 49,000 in 2025, returning to pre-COVID levels.

Several major forces recorded year-on-year falls of around 15 to 17%.

Simon offered a hypothesis for this decline that practitioners may not have considered: the post-COVID closure of some 500 nightclubs and 2,000 pubs, combined with the shift to app-based transport and food delivery, has reduced the situations in which spontaneous violence occurs. Fewer people queuing in busy taxi ranks or takeaways means fewer opportunities for confrontations to escalate. Whether this explanation holds up to rigorous analysis remains to be tested.

DI Connelly added an important clarification on what knife crime data actually captures. Many members of the public assume the headline figure reflects knives taken off people - it does not. Possession of a knife does not feature in ONS knife crime statistics. The recorded figures include threatened use, perceived threat, and incidents involving sharp instruments other than knives. Understanding what the data does and does not capture matters for how forces analyse and respond to the problem.

What drives escalation in the street environment

The panel's sharpest discussion focused on the urban street context - the environment most closely associated in public perception with knife crime among young people.

Simon, drawing on over 500 interviews conducted through his expert witness work, described a highly status-conscious world in which affiliation to a street gang or drug network creates what he called a cast-iron imperative to carry. For those day-to-day members of such networks, not carrying is itself a risk. The triggers for escalation are relational and reputational - perceived disrespect, challenges to hierarchical position, or threats to status, monitored constantly in person and online. In some networks in major cities, Simon described what he terms a stab-on-sight imperative: spontaneous attacks on rivals driven by perceived grievance rather than planned operation.

Paul reinforced the point about the highly localised and contextual nature of the problem. There is no one-size-fits-all picture of knife crime. The problem in a South London estate is structurally different from the challenge in West Yorkshire. Before reaching for a solution, the discipline of accurately understanding the local problem is essential, and that analytical capability, both panellists agreed, is inconsistently available across forces.

The practice gap

One of the most pointed moments in the session came when Simon offered a direct critique of the current operational picture. Intelligence and data analysis capacity has declined significantly compared to even a decade ago, he argued. Officers are often paralysed by GDPR anxiety and reluctant to share data, despite the legal frameworks for doing so having been in place since the Crime and Disorder Act. Analysts, Simon suggested, have become so rare they risk being studied by David Attenborough.

Paul did not dispute the pressure. Policing, he acknowledged, is largely reactive at a local level. The resource required for the kind of sustained preventative analytical work both panellists described simply is not consistently in place. Violence Reduction Units represent an attempt to build that capacity, but Harding was candid that the evidence for their impact remains limited, with too many short-term initiatives, insufficient evaluation, and a tendency toward what he called dynamic inertia - movement without measurable progress.

Multi-agency working and where the evidence points

Both panellists were aligned on the central conclusion: knife crime cannot be policed away. Paul was direct that policing typically arrives at the end of a young person's story, long after the conditions for violence have taken hold. Education, healthcare, social services, community organisations and the third sector all have roles that policing cannot and arguably should not seek to fill.

The Clear-Hold-Build framework was discussed as a structured approach to place-based intervention, combining an enforcement phase with community stabilisation and longer-term investment. Both panellists acknowledged the build phase as the hardest to sustain, dependent on community trust, continued investment and partner agencies maintaining presence after police step back.

On focused deterrence, Simon offered a measured assessment. The model has shown promise in specific US contexts but has not transferred cleanly to England and Wales, partly because the compulsory diversion element that underpins the approach in America cannot be replicated here without court orders that our system does not routinely impose.

What practitioners can take away

Simon's closing observation has stayed with us: we need to find solutions with young people, not solutions to young people. Alongside that, Paul's challenge to parents was characteristically direct - if every parent checked under their child's bedroom tonight, knife crime would fall tomorrow.

Neither observation is sufficient on its own. But together they point to something the evidence consistently supports: reducing knife violence requires honest analysis of the local problem, sustained multi-agency commitment, and the involvement of communities and young people themselves in designing what comes next.

The recording of Easier Said Than Done 10 is now available. [Watch here — https://www.sebp.police.uk/eventlibrary]

The Society of Evidence Based Policing is a UK charity that promotes the use, production and communication of evidence in policing.

Use | Produce | Communicate | Evidence