Nearly a decade into Sadiq Khan’s tenure as Mayor of London, knife crime has yet again become one of the most pressing challenges facing the capital.
While headline homicide figures have fallen to historic lows, the overall number of knife offences has risen sharply over the past two years, returning London to levels last seen before the pandemic.
The trend exposes both the persistence of long-standing problems and the political risks for a mayor who has repeatedly promised to make the city’s streets safer.
Recent figures from the Metropolitan Police and the Office for National Statistics show that knife crime offences in London rose to roughly 16,300 in the 12 months to March 2025, up from just under 15,000 the previous year and around 12,800 in 2022/23.
That represents an increase of nearly 30 per cent in two years. Although not unprecedented—2019/20 saw similar totals—these figures mark a decisive reversal of the pandemic-era decline. The mayor himself has stated, despite evidence to the contrary from the police, that knife crime is down.
The Mayor’s opponents have seized on the numbers to argue that London has become less safe under his watch. Khan, first elected in 2016 and now in his third term, has consistently emphasised long-term prevention, youth investment and community engagement.
His administration has launched a Violence Reduction Unit (VRU), expanded mentoring schemes in schools and youth clubs, and argued that policing alone cannot address the root causes of knife crime. But critics point to the rising offence figures as evidence that these policies have failed to deliver tangible city-wide results.
A Surge in Offences, but Fewer Fatalities
The increase in knife crime is not uniform across all measures. The number of homicides in London fell to 104 in 2024/25, down from 116 in the previous year, marking the lowest annual total since monthly homicide records began. Hospital admissions for under-25s with knife injuries also declined by around 10 per cent in the 12 months to June 2025. These figures suggest that while knife incidents are becoming more frequent, they are not necessarily becoming more deadly.
This divergence may reflect several factors: better trauma care, faster emergency response times, and an increase in possession offences, where knives are seized through stop-and-search before they are used. Indeed, the Metropolitan Police have stepped up targeted stop-and-search operations in knife crime “hotspots”, often using data analytics to identify likely locations. These tactics have contributed to a rise in recorded offences even as serious injury rates have stabilised or fallen.
Nationally, police recorded just over 52,800 knife-enabled offences in England and Wales in the same period, a slight decline of about 1 per cent year-on-year. London bucked that trend, recording a significant rise and once again accounting for around one-third of all knife offences in England and Wales.
Ethnicity of Under-25 Suspects: A Statistical Snapshot
Knife crime in London is disproportionately concentrated among young people. According to Metropolitan Police figures, the majority of knife crime suspects under the age of 25 are male, with a demographic skew that has remained remarkably consistent over the past decade. Ethnicity data, published annually, provides a neutral statistical snapshot of the composition of suspects in this age group.
In the year to March 2024, around 54 per cent of under-25 knife crime suspects in London were recorded as Black, about 28 per cent as White, 12 per cent as Asian, and the remainder in mixed or other categories. These proportions have remained relatively stable in recent years, with only minor year-on-year variations. For context, the 2021 Census recorded London’s population as approximately 14 per cent Black, 54 per cent White, and 19 per cent Asian, underscoring that suspects are not distributed evenly across the city’s demographic groups.
Police analysts emphasise that these figures reflect suspect profiles, not convictions, and are influenced by factors including location of offences, policing practices, and reporting patterns. The Met also cautions that knife crime is concentrated in specific boroughs—such as Southwark, Lambeth, Croydon and Westminster—where the age and ethnic composition of the population differs markedly from the London average.
The purpose of publishing this data, according to City Hall, is to enable more targeted prevention work with at-risk groups rather than to draw simplistic conclusions.
Political Promises vs Statistical Reality
Khan’s mayoralty has coincided with two contrasting trends. Between 2016 and 2019, knife crime rose sharply, reaching a pre-pandemic peak. The following two years saw a pronounced fall, largely attributed to lockdown restrictions, reduced street activity and school closures. Since 2022, however, the numbers have climbed again. By 2025, London’s knife crime levels are back to roughly where they were at the end of Khan’s first term.
The Mayor argues that progress should be judged by serious outcomes rather than raw offence numbers. Falling homicide rates and reduced youth hospitalisations, he says, demonstrate the value of early intervention. His critics counter that Londoners experience crime not as abstract statistics but as daily reality, and that rising offence numbers undermine confidence in his leadership.
The political stakes are high. Knife crime is a highly visible issue, often dominating headlines after particularly shocking incidents. It also carries a symbolic weight, reflecting broader questions about youth culture, policing priorities and community relations. Khan’s repeated re-election suggests that Londoners broadly support his approach, but persistent increases in recorded offences give his opponents a powerful line of attack.
Structural Challenges and Local Dynamics
The resilience of knife crime reflects deep-rooted structural challenges that transcend any single mayoralty. Economic pressures, the erosion of local youth services, and changes in urban demographics have all played a role. In several inner London boroughs, community organisations that once provided informal support networks have been hollowed out by funding cuts, leaving vulnerable young people more exposed to peer pressure and gang recruitment.
Policing capacity is another factor. Despite recent recruitment drives, neighbourhood policing teams remain under strain. Competing priorities—from counter-terrorism to online fraud—have stretched resources thin. The Met has experimented with predictive policing techniques and hotspot deployments, but sustaining these approaches across a city of nine million people is difficult.
Ethnicity adds another layer of complexity. Because knife crime is geographically concentrated, suspect demographics often mirror local population structures rather than city-wide averages. Areas with larger Black or mixed-ethnicity youth populations, for example, will naturally see higher proportions of suspects from those groups if knife crime is concentrated there. Police and community leaders caution against misinterpreting these statistics, noting that they reflect patterns of vulnerability and policing rather than inherent characteristics of any group.
An Uneasy Balance Sheet
As Sadiq Khan, who is chauffeured around London in a taxpayer-funded armoured Range Rover Sentinel, at a reported cost of £300,000, approaches the later stages of his third term, the balance sheet on knife crime is mixed.
Offence numbers are high and rising, returning London to pre-pandemic levels. Homicides and serious injuries are falling, a trend City Hall attributes to prevention and medical advances. Ethnic patterns among young suspects remain largely unchanged, pointing to persistent structural and geographical factors rather than policy shifts.
For Londoners, the lived reality is that knife crime remains a serious and visible problem. Political debate will continue to frame the issue in starkly different terms: as a policing failure on one side, or as evidence of deep social challenges requiring long-term investment on the other. The data, for its part, tells a story of a complex, entrenched problem that has outlasted successive strategies and political cycles.
Main Image: – Own work.
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