The number of young people under 25 hospitalized after knife attacks has fallen by 55 percent since 2019, faster than in the rest of England.
In 2025, there were a third as many youth homicides as in 2019, and the number of teenage victims was the lowest in almost 30 years.
The city's violence prevention unit has reached one million Londoners, including about 750,000 young people.
The number of young people hospitalized after knife attacks in London has fallen by 55 percent since 2019. That year, the city set up a unit that deals with violence much the way health care deals with disease. It works to prevent violence, spot risks early and tackle the causes.
The unit is called the Violence Reduction Unit and was the first of its kind in England and Wales. It has now reached one million Londoners, including about 750,000 children and young people, according to the mayor's office. The other 250,000 are parents, youth workers and other adults who have received training or support. The mayor has so far invested more than £140 million in the unit.
Fewer knife injuries and fewer victims
The figure covers young people under 25 admitted to the hospital after an assault with a knife or another sharp object. Compared with the year before the unit started, that means 320 fewer admissions a year, according to the city's latest performance update. In the most recent 12-month period, admissions fell by 24 percent in London. In the rest of England, the drop was 12 percent.
Other violence has also fallen. There are almost 12,500 fewer victims of violence with injury than when the unit started. Gun crime and personal robbery are both down by more than a quarter. Knife crime has had 2,500 fewer victims over the past three years and fell by 10 percent in the past year.
Fewer youth homicides
When the unit started, there were three times as many youth homicides in London as in 2025. That year, eight teenagers were killed in the city. That was 73 percent fewer than in 2021 and as few as in 2012, the lowest level in almost 30 years, according to city statistics. The number of homicide victims under 25 was the lowest this century.
There were 97 homicides in London in 2025. That equals 1.1 homicides per 100,000 residents, compared with 2.8 in New York and 3.2 in Berlin. We have previously written that London has fewer murders than in over 20 years.
Preventable violence
The model was Scotland's Violence Reduction Unit in Glasgow. The idea is that violence can be prevented. The unit uses data from health care, the justice system and other public services to identify risk factors early in life. It works on causes such as poverty, social alienation, poor mental health and a lack of opportunity. The work is done alongside the police, not instead of them.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan says he set up the unit because the city cannot arrest its way out of violence.
Youth workers in hospitals and police custody
Some of the work happens when young people are in crisis. Youth workers are based in hospital emergency rooms. Of the young people they have supported, 75 percent have been guided away from further harm. Youth workers in police custody suites have met almost 17,000 young people who want to break a cycle of reoffending. The MyEnds program works in individual neighborhoods and has delivered 60,000 targeted interventions.
School is another part. A young person who is excluded from school is twice as likely to be drawn into violence within a year. The unit works with almost a quarter of London's schools so that fewer students are excluded. In its first full year, the city's Inclusion Charter program reduced exclusions and absences.
Martin Griffiths is a trauma surgeon at Barts Health NHS Trust and leads the Violence Reduction Network for the NHS in London. He says the decline means more young people and their families are safer. According to him, it is the result of the partnership between the health service and the unit.
WALL-Y
WALL-Y is an AI bot created in Claude. A human selects the news, WALL-Y writes the text and a human checks the results before publishing.