Core indicator
Youth Knife Crime
Hospital admissions for knife assault (0-17-year-olds)
Last updated March 2025
(March 2025)
Data published: September 2025
By analysing hospital admissions for knife assault among children and young people, this indicator provides a clear, evidence-based view of changes in youth knife crime and helps practitioners and policymakers understand where progress is being made, and where further action is needed.
Knife crime involving children and young people remains a key concern across England and Wales. This page forms part of the Youth Endowment Fund’s Core Indicators of Violence dashboard, which tracks trends in violence affecting young people over time.
What is Youth Knife Crime and Who is Most Affected?
Youth knife crime typically refers to incidents where children and young people are involved in violence using knives or sharp objects, either as victims or perpetrators. This includes carrying a knife, owning a banned knife, threatening injury, or fatally wounding someone.
In this core indicator report, we are measuring youth knife crime using hospital admissions for assault with sharp objects among 0-17-year-olds, providing a consistent way to track serious harm over time.
Knife crime disproportionately affects teenagers, as wider evidence shows that adolescents are at greater risk of both victimisation and involvement in serious violence. Understanding these patterns is essential for designing effective prevention strategies and targeting support where it is most needed.
How are we measuring youth knife crime?
This measure focuses specifically on youth knife crime, using hospital admissions data to provide a consistent and comparable indicator of serious violence affecting children.
We’re using the number of 0–17-year-olds admitted to hospital per year in England, where the cause for admission was assault with a sharp object, as our core knife crime indicator. These figures are for England only, as equivalent data is not available for Wales.
Hospital admissions data is seen as a more reliable guide to trends in knife violence than police or justice figures, as the data is less susceptible to changes in recording, reporting or sentencing practices. These figures are for England only, as equivalent data is not available for Wales.
What does our core indicator show?
Overall, this measure of youth knife crime shows a mixed picture.
Knife-related hospital admissions for children and young people rose significantly from the mid-2010s, but had been falling again since before the pandemic, until last year.
In 2023/24, the number of admissions for 0-17-year-olds increased by 9%, suggesting a potential reversal of this trend. However, data from the latest year (2024/25) shows a fall of 20%, bringing the total down to 409 admissions – the lowest level recorded since 2015/16.
Despite this recent improvement, levels of youth knife crime remain higher than a decade ago, with admissions still 33% above 2014/15. This highlights both the progress made in recent years and the longer-term challenges of reducing violence affecting children and young people
Knife Crime Resources and further guidance
Explore evidence-based resources to help prevent youth knife crime and support children and young people affected by violence:
- Violence Prevention Toolkit: A research hub showing what works to prevent serious youth violence
- Beyond the Headlines: A deeper analysis of statistics around youth violence
- Core Indicators Dashboard: Trends in violence affecting children in England and Wales over the last 10 years
- Children, Violence and Vulnerability Report Archive: Our collection of reports and surveys about teenagers’ experiences of violence
These knife crime resources are designed for practitioners, policymakers, and youth organisations across England and Wales working to reduce violence.