Revealed: London knife thugs going unpunished - three in four escape prosecution

Police at the scene of a stabbing in Greenwich where a teenager died
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Three out of four violent knife offenders in London are escaping prosecution in a blow to efforts to halt the rise of stabbings and killings, the Evening Standard reveals today.

Metropolitan Police figures show that fewer than 3,000 people suspected of carrying out a violent crime with a blade in the past two and a half years have faced justice.

A​lmost 11,000 other suspects have avoided charges entirely because of “evidential difficulties”, such as the failure of police to identify them. In potentially hundreds of cases, the victim was too scared to give evidence.

The statistics, obtained by the Standard using the Freedom of Information Act, reveal the charging rate for knife-point robberies is even lower: about nine in ten suspects avoid prosecution.

Police success in bringing to justice rapists and other sexual offenders who use a blade to intimidate their victims is also worryingly low. Only 27 of the 119 such crimes committed in 2016 have so far led to charges.

Knifed: Ethan Nedd-Bruce was ambushed by three people

While a significant number of these crimes are still being investigated, today’s figures will raise concerns about the ability of the police and criminal justice system to protect the public.

They come only days after the Office for National Statistics warned that knife crime in London has reached a record high, with 91 fatal stabbings in the year to the end of June.

Police at the scene where a man died and another was seriously injured after a stabbing in Hainault
PA

Sarah Jones, the Labour MP who heads Parliament’s all-party group on knife crime, said: “What’s particularly shocking is the growing number of offences where the police identified a suspect but they weren’t prosecuted because the victim did not support further action. This suggests a serious problem with victims feeling too afraid or mistrustful to testify. The Government needs to do more to make victims of knife attacks feel safe.”

Susan Hall, a Conservative London Assembly member, blamed City Hall, saying: “We should be robustly dealing with the perpetrators of these heinous crimes.”

The police statistics cover knife crime offences committed over 30 months during 2016, 2017, and the first half of this year. They cover three categories: violence against the person, sexual offences and robbery. In the violence against the person category, which includes fatal and non-lethal stabbings, as well as assaults and other offences in which the perpetrator had a knife, a total of 15,655 offences were recorded by police.

Only 2,996 of these cases have so far led to a charge or summons. In more than 2,600 cases, police said that the victim did “not support” their investigation. This is believed to be because an unspecified, but potentially large number of victims were too afraid of retribution. The statistics for robbery show an even lower charging rate of nine per cent, with only 1,509 cases charged despite 17,006 such offences over the 30-month period.

For rape and other sex offences carried out with a knife, the Met lists 54 cases out of 377 in which there has been a charge. Most of the failed investigations are blamed on “evidential difficulties”, including about 60 cases where the victim was unwilling to help police. The Met said it was putting knife offenders before the courts “every day”, but wanted to improve its success rate by focusing on “maximising charging opportunities”.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said: “The Government now has no choice but to increase police funding in the Budget. Failure to do so would be a complete abdication of their responsibility.”

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