What is Knife Crime?

Knife crime relates to crimes involving knives or other bladed or pointed articles. So knife crime incorporates crimes involving articles other than knives. The definition of bladed or pointed articles includes, but is not limited to, for example:

 

• Knives
• Razors
• Swords
• Machetes
• Axes
• Bayonets
• Forks
• Needles
• Scissors
• Pens
• Screwdrivers
• Arrows
• Broken glass bottles

 

Even a blunt butter knife is considered a bladed article, even though it has no sharp point and no cutting edge. It has a blade and is therefore a bladed article.

 

Some bladed or pointed articles will be in their original manufactured form, while others may be modified, for example a screwdriver with a sharpened tip, or improvised such as a piece of wood with a nail driven through it. Any of these articles can be classed as an offensive weapon.

 

Knife crime includes any offence where a sharp instrument that would pierce the skin is used or possessed. Knife crime includes:

 

• Carrying a knife
• Trying to buy a knife if you are under 18
• Threatening someone with a knife
• Owning a banned knife 
• Injuring, fatally wounding or murdering somebody with a knife
• Intent to injure or harm somebody with a knife
• A robbery or burglary where a knife was involved or carried as a weapon

Above we have used the term knife; however, this also includes other bladed, sharp or improvised instruments. 

 

Knife crime broadly relates to two kinds of behaviour.

 

The first relates to people owning or possessing knives when doing so is illegal. Being illegal may be because they are banned objects or they are illegal in certain contexts, mainly being possessed in public without good reason.

 

The second behaviour relates to the use of a knife in the commission of another offence, so-called knife-involved offences. Typically, this relates to violence or threats against the person, theft, burglary or criminal damage.