Knife homicides recorded by police in England and Wales down 21% in 2025

Homicides involving a knife or sharp instrument recorded by police forces in England and Wales fell 21% last year, while overall knife crime dropped by 10%, figures show.

Some 172 knife homicides were logged by forces in 2025, down from 217 in 2024 and the lowest annual number since comparable data began in 2010/11.

The fall helped drive down the total number of homicides last year, which stood at 503, down 6% from 534 in 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Levels of police-recorded knife crime are now at their lowest since the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic.

A total of 49,151 knife offences were logged by forces in England and Wales in 2025, down from 54,548 in 2024.

The figure is lower than the 49,190 offences recorded in 2021/22, but higher than the 44,728 in the first year of the pandemic, 2020/21.

Two-thirds of police forces in England and Wales (29 out of 44) recorded a year-on-year fall in incidents of knife crime in 2025.

They include the three largest forces: the Metropolitan Police, where offences dropped 17%; Greater Manchester, also down 17%: and West Midlands, down 15%.

Nearly half of forces (20 out of 44) saw a fall in homicides, including the Met and Greater Manchester.

The latest ONS data also shows shoplifting offences fell slightly last year, down from 516,611 in 2024 to 509,566 in 2025.

The drop may reflect a change in the way shoplifting offences are recorded by police forces.

A clarification issued to forces by the Home Office in April 2025 said that where someone has entered a retail premises, steals, then either uses or threatens violence against staff or other people, the offence should be recorded as robbery of business property, not shoplifting.

This change may also account for the steep increase last year in offences classed as robbery of businesses, which rose 78% from 14,691 in 2024 to 26,158 in 2025.

Sarah Jones, crime and policing minister, said the Government is “driving down crimes that blight communities and have previously gone unpunished”, adding: “We will continue to build on this progress and not stop until every community feels a change.

“Rates of shop and phone theft remain unacceptably high. But these figures show that our swift, decisive action is turning the tide: shoplifting is down on last year.

“The number of shoplifters facing justice continues to soar under this Government, with 17% more charges in just a year.

“Our policing reforms will deliver lasting change. A new National Police Service will tackle nationwide and cross-border crime, meaning local forces will be better focused on policing their areas and protecting communities.”

Chris Philp, shadow home secretary, said shoplifting offences recorded by police had risen 8% since the general election and had “become the defining symbol of Labour’s breakdown of law and order: a crime so routine, so consequence-free, that shop workers face more risk confronting a thief than the thief faces from the police”.

He added: “Under this Government, the odds are firmly with the criminal.

“Labour’s answer has been to cut police numbers by over 1,300, let 50,000 criminals out early, and legislate to abolish prison sentences under a year – so virtually no shoplifter will ever go to prison.

“The Conservatives will reverse this. Our Take Back Our Streets plan puts 10,000 extra officers on the street, triples stop-and-search, and introduces facial recognition in the worst crime hotspots.”

Overall, police forces recorded 5.24 million offences in England and Wales in 2025, excluding fraud and computer misuse, down 2% from 5.34 million in 2024.

The total is slightly below the 5.31 million in the pre-pandemic year of 2019/20, but up from 3.90 million a decade earlier in 2015/16.

Increases in the number of offences over the last 10 years “have been largely influenced by improvements in recording standards”, the ONS said.

As such, police-recorded crime “is not considered a reliable indicator of overall crime trends”.

Separate figures from the ONS Crime Survey for England and Wales suggest people aged 16 and over experienced 9.58 million incidents of crime in 2025, broadly unchanged from 9.61 million in 2024.

This is 15% lower than the 11.22 million incidents in 2016/17, the earliest comparable year.

The survey “provides a reliable measure of crime trends for the population, and the offence types it covers” because it is not affected by police reporting or recording changes, the ONS said.

It covers a range of personal and household victim-based crime, but does not include sexual offences, stalking, harassment and domestic abuse, which are presented separately.

Experiences of theft, criminal damage and violence with or without injury, as measured by the ONS survey, have been on a broad downwards trend since the mid-1990s.