Knives and violence have no place on our streets. Every incident inflicts profound trauma on victims, on families, on communities, and on the professionals who respond. The harm, the grief and the cost of a life not lived are incalculable.

Knife crime is one of the most commonly raised concerns among young people.^{[footnote 1]} Preventing further tragedies and building a society where children are not only free to live without knife violence, but free from the fear that knife violence will affect them, is the driving force behind this Government’s unprecedented manifesto commitment to halve knife crime in a decade.

Knife crime rose by 4% in the year before this Parliament and saw a 4% rise the year before that.^{[footnote 2]} This means that England and Wales saw 54,659 knife-enabled offences recorded by the police in the year to June 2024, over 80% of which were knife-enabled robbery and knife-enabled assault.^{[footnote 3]}

Halving knife crime in the next decade is an ambitious but achievable goal. To succeed, we must treat violence not as an inevitable feature of life but as a preventable outcome shaped by the environments, relationships and choices that surround us.

This Plan takes a balanced approach across enforcement and prevention. It combines early support, targeted interventions, modern policing rooted in this Government’s wider programme of police reform, targeting the full suite of policing tactics against offenders and specialised help for those already involved in knife violence. Each layer strengthens the next. Together, this forms a long-term, evidence-based strategy that tackles the root causes of knife crime, prevents escalation, targets offenders when it occurs and stops repeat harm.

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