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Given the recent media uproar over stabbings in the capital, it will be interesting to see how many newspapers choose to run some new (pdf link).

The figures compare what happened between July 2007 and June 2008 with a year earlier. In the most recent 12 months, there were 9,997 reports of knife crime in the capital. A year before, it was 11,642 - a FALL of 14%.

Gun crime has fallen by a similar amount (14%) and youth violence is also down by 7.7%.

These are big falls and, to my mind, make very encouraging reading.

Some will dismiss them as nonsense, preferring to judge the state of violent crime in London on the basis of what they read in the paper or hear in the local pub.

But there is one statistic that we can all accept the police are not in a position to massage - the murder rate.

In the year to July 2007, there were 175 murders in the capital. The subsequent 12 months saw 154 - 21 FEWER. One murder would still be too many but the figures make a mockery of the claims that life is becoming cheaper in London.

shows that in June last year there were 26 murders in London. This June, it was 14. London, don't forget, is deemed the hottest of hot-spots when it comes to murderous youths with blades.

When the national crime figures show that people's experience of wounding (not what the police record but what 50,000 people said in face-to-face interviews with a polling company) is DOWN a significant 19% year on year, it is really time to stop this myth that we are in the midst of a knife epidemic.

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