Convictions for knife crime fall after lockdown following several years of consistent rises
| Published date | 07 January 2021 |
| Date | 07 January 2021 |
The figure includes offences of possession or threatening with a knife or similar offensive weapon.
It works out as 48 convictions or cautions for every 100,000 people in the area -higher than the national average of 35 offences per 100,000 of the population.
The number has fallen by 17 per cent from 728 in the year ending June 2019, and is the lowest seen since the year to June 2017.
Long term trends over the last decade show that convictions and cautions for knife offences have risen consistently since 2015, until the most recent year.
This is likely due to the pandemic, which has resulted in a drop in crime but also significant changes to the justice system.
Separate figures on serious knife crimes recorded by police show that these offences have not fallen quite so rapidly, suggesting the drop in convictions may be more to do with court disruptions.
In the year ending June 2020, there were 1,318 serious offences involving a knife recorded by police in Merseyside.
These only cover the most serious offences such as murder, attempted murder, rape, robbery, threats to kill and assault with injury or with intent to cause serious harm -and are not directly comparable with the figures on convictions.
However, they show that serious knife crime has only dropped by seven per cent from 1,420 offences recorded by Merseyside Police in the year ending June 2019 -at less than half the rate of the number of convictions and cautions for possession and threats.
Merseyside Police says it will clamp down on knife crime and it launched campaign to make our streets safer.
Superintendent Jennifer Wilson said: “Merseyside Police is determined to protect the public of Merseyside from serious violence, including knife crime, and remains committed to targeting the people who choose to carry weapons on our streets and bring them to justice.
“Since 2019 we have been given Home Office funding for our Operation Target campaign. As part of Operation Target, between 1 st April and 31 st December 2020, we made 508 arrests for knife possession, over 430 knife related crime arrests, recovered over 1300 knives and offensive weapons, carried out over 170 open land searches and stop searched over 4400 people.
“Last January, together with partners across the county, we also launched a new knife crime...
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