Knife crime figures increase – but Nottinghamshire Police say they are winning the battle

Anti-knife crime charity the Ben Kinsella Trust said it is distressing to see violent crime figures heading “the wrong way” after knife and gun offences across England rose last year.

However, Nottinghamshire Police said knife crime in the county is actually down on pre-pandemic levels.

A force spokesman said: “Statistics taken during the Covid-19 pandemic period offer a misleading impression of crime, when compared with the years before and after, due to restrictions imposed during the lockdowns impacting people’s normal behaviour e.g. being limited to only leaving their homes to go to work, which led to less crime as a whole nationwide. Bearing this in mind, 2020/21 figures shouldn’t be compared with 2019/20 and 2021/22.”

The force spoke out after the PA press agency said Office of National Statistics figures showed Nottinghamshire Police recorded 829 offences involving a knife or sharp object in the year to March, up 10 per cent from 755 the year prior and up from 775 offences logged in the year to March 2020.

However, the force disputed the figures, claiming it recorded 852 offences between July 2021 and June 2022, down 4 per cent from the 891 it recorded in the 12 months to March 2020.

Nottinghamshire Police has been working to tackle knife crime, with 196 weapons handed in during an amnesty during Operation Sceptre last month.

Other initiatives as part of the operation included delivering education sessions to more than 5,000 pupils across more than 70 schools, an anti-knife crime worksop, the deployment of knife arches across the county and knife sweeps across areas known for blades being dumped or hidden.

Superintendent Kathryn Craner, force knife crime lead, said: “Tackling knife crime is vsomething we work on all year-round to try and improve for our communities.

“Operation Sceptre offers just a small sample of some of the work we do each day to protect people from the devastation we know knife crime can cause to families.

“Taking knives off the streets and educating young people about the consequences of carrying a blade so they make the right choices is crucial to reducing offending and preventing these crimes from happening in the first place.”