When the UK was first hit by an outbreak of coronavirus, Met commissioner Cressida Dick called the falling rates of knife offences a “silver lining” to the pandemic.
Since then, many authority figures have claimed that as a whole, knife crime is on the decline in the capital.
But in 2021, London saw a record of knife-related teenage homicides.
Every day, there are new reports of fatal stabbings in the capital with victims and perpatrators as young as 15 years old.
So why has there been such an explosion of violence since the easing of lockdown?
To find out more, SWL spoke to Lives not Knives, the Ben Kinsella Trust, and Professor Simon Harding about the impacts of the pandemic on knife crime rates and youth violence.
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