Government 'failing on knife crime'
The Government was accused of failing to crack down on crime as figures showed more than 350 knife crimes are committed in England and Wales every day.
The British Crime Survey (BCS) showed nearly 130,000 took place last year - and the total does not include offences involving under-16s.
The grim total means that someone was wounded or threatened with a knife, on average, once every four minutes.
Although overall crime was down, Conservatives said the statistics contained some "chilling" facts which exposed Labour's failure on law and order.
The figures - which will deepen public concern about knife crime - disclosed that more than 22,000 serious offences involved a blade last year, including 231 attempted murders, nearly 14,000 robberies and more than 8,000 woundings.
A third of all violent crimes involved a gang of three or more offenders, they showed. A quarter of such crimes featured four or more assailants and 8% involved three attackers.
Nearly one in eight violent crimes involved school-age children and 52% were committed by criminals aged 16 to 24. Additional figures from the UK card payments association Apacs revealed a leap in plastic card fraud.
Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve said: "While we welcome a drop in overall recorded crime these figures cannot hide some very chilling facts.
"The fact that violent crime has risen by 80% under Labour and the scale of knife crime on our streets, officially recorded for the first time, is a shocking indictment of Labour's failure to tackle crime and its causes."
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said: "Three years ago we set ourselves the tough challenge to reduce all crime by 15%. I am extremely pleased that today's figures show that we have exceeded this with an overall crime reduction of 18%. The Government's priority is to build on what we have achieved."
via Ananova.com
