The Japan Times - UK police set up national hub to cut illegal knife sales

In the year ending September 2025 there were about 50,000 knife crimes in England and Wales, according to the Office for National Statistics, with the highest rates in London.

The capital's Metropolitan Police released statistics for 2025 showing a quarter of stabbing victims were under 18.

The National Police Chiefs' Council has now set up a National Knife Crime Centre, with £1.7 bn ($2.2 bn) of government funding per year for the next three years.

It will have a "specific focus on tackling the supply of those knives ... that will often fall into the hands of the vulnerable or violent, including children", said its leader, police commander Stephen Clayman.

Police linked the prevalence of stabbings to easy access to large, impressive "status weapons" such as machetes online.

More than half of the websites they have identified as selling such illegal weapons are based outside Britain, some in the United States or China, Clayman said.

The government has set a "very ambitious" goal of cutting knife crime by half within a decade, said the minister for policing, Sarah Jones, calling the centre "a really pivotal point".

It "will coordinate investigations into illegal sellers" and tackle a "grey market, in which large quantities of knives and weapons are purchased online," she said.

Currently there is no compulsory regulation of knife sellers in Britain and while sales to children are illegal, age checks are easily bypassed, Clayman warned.

"There are people who are just selling over social media channels, just dismissively ignoring the law, and that's what we're trying to stop," he told AFP.

Some of the sellers are children themselves, who may "think it's an entrepreneurial thing to do", he said.

"Then you've got people who know it's illegal, they're doing it to facilitate violence", he said.

- 'Inflicting violence' -

At the event, a table displayed a gleaming array of knives used to train police including ninja swords and machetes -- which are only banned if they have a serrated blade.

In recent years, Britain banned ownership, even at home, of "ninja swords" with blades up to 24 inches (61 centimetres) long, and "zombie" type knives, offering surrender schemes in which thousands of weapons were handed in.

Legislation currently going through parliament would introduce stronger age verification checks for online sales and a requirement to report buyers making bulk orders.

These are part of a raft of measures called Ronan's Law, named after a teenager, Ronan Kanda, killed with a 22-inch sword in 2022 by two other teenagers in a case of mistaken identity.

Ronan's elder sister, Nikita, said one of the killers bought the murder weapon online on a site that "openly sold dangerous weapons with minimal checks and easy access for anyone".

"These weapons are not harmless objects. They are being used to enable, inflict and escalate violence."

S.Yamada--JT