Britain grapples with surge of knife attacks

Jul 19, 2008

On Friday police confirmed the death of an 18-year-old in south London, the 21st teenager to die of violence in the British capital this year...

"We have seen the emergence of a worrying trend in relation to knife crime," said Scotland Yard's Deputy Assistant Commissioner Alf Hitchcock.

"We see both an intensification in the severity of offending, and a worrying change in the age profile of offenders and victims, which has decreased from mid- to late-teens to early 20s down to early to mid-teens," he added.

Analysts say young people appear to be increasingly worried about their own safety... "They fear they're going to be attacked themselves," said Professor Gloria Laycock, from the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science, named after a well-known BBC television presenter who was shot dead on her doorstep in 1999.