London knife crime soars by almost 60% – Here are the hotspots
A new report commissioned by Policy Exchange has found that knife crime in London increased by 58.5% in the three years between 2021 and 2024.
The think thank said London was in the grip of a ‘street crime epidemic’, noting that knife crime in the city has reached an all time high with the majority of crime confined to specific hotspots.
These included a small area of around 20 streets in London’s West End near Oxford Circus and Regent Street, which had more knife crime than almost 15% of the capital combined.
According to the report, 60% of the knife crimes committed in London were robberies, and more than 81,000 mobile phones were stolen in the city last year.
The rate at which these crimes are solved is especially poor, with the think tank stating that only one in 20 robberies and one in 170 ‘theft person’ crimes were solved in London in 2024.
Policy Exchange said that to better address the problem of crime in London, more police should be deployed to frontline areas rather than working in roles classified under Transformation, Human Resources, and Culture, Diversity, and Inclusion.
It added that courts have taken a ‘dangerously lax’ approach to cracking down on prolific criminals and condemned the number of prolific offenders who escaped prison sentences in 2024.
The think tank also addressed criticisms that stop-and-search activities conducted by the police were racist, noting that 43.6% of those charged with murder are black, and 48.6% of robbery suspects are black. It added that while 13.5% of London’s population are black, 39.5% of people stopped and searched by the police are black.
“Policy Exchange asserts that it is not ‘racist’ when the police are merely responding to the demographic breakdown of serious and violent offending in the capital,” the think tank said.
20 hotspot neighbourhoods, classified as Lower Layer Super Output Areas (LSOAs) were identified in the report as having the highest levels of knife crime last year. These London knife crime hotspots are shown below.
