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Headline homicide comparisons ignore London’s knife crime

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Your editorial (“Don’t believe the fake gloom about London”, December 20) is right to note that London’s homicide rate remains low by international standards. But the editorial’s broader assertion that London is “in most ways far safer” rests on a selective reading of crime indicators, and downplays a category of violence in which London is a clear international outlier: knife crime.

Unlike most peer cities, England and Wales systematically record and publish “offences involving a knife or sharp instrument” per 100,000 inhabitants. On this official metric, London is not merely worse than other UK regions; it is exceptional by international standards. In the year ending March 2025, the Metropolitan Police area recorded around 180 knifecrime offences per 100,000 residents, by far the highest rate in England and Wales. This is not a marginal phenomenon. Knife crime in London includes robbery, serious assault and homicide, and has risen structurally over the past decade. The fact that firearms are rare does not make the streets benign; it merely shifts the weapon of violence. For victims, the distinction is academic.

Comparisons with New York, Washington or Paris also require caution. Those cities do not publish a directly comparable, all-offences knife-crime rate per 100,000. Where partial indicators exist (for example hospital admissions or homicide by weapon type), they suggest that London’s prevalence of knife-enabled street violence is unusually high for a wealthy western capital, even if its murder rate remains lower.

Put simply: a low homicide rate does not equate to low everyday violence. The absence of guns does not mean the absence of serious harm. And London’s knife-crime figures are not a sideshow; they are a defining feature of its publicsafety landscape.

Recognising this does not mean indulging in “fake gloom”. It means avoiding the opposite error: complacency, built on headline homicide comparisons while ignoring the form of violence that London actually experiences.

Juergen Schaufler

Blaubeuren, Germany

Head­line hom­icide com­par­is­ons ignore Lon­don’s knife crime

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