Knife assailants 'getting younger'

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Scotland Yard Deputy Assistant Commissioner Alf Hitchcock said that while once both offenders and their victims were typically in their late teens or early 20s, now they were more likely to be in their mid or even early teens.

At the same time, he said that police were seeing an "intensification in the severity" in the attacks being carried out.

"Recently we have seen the emergence of a worrying trend in relation to knife crime," he said.

"We see both an intensification in the severity of offending, and a worrying change in the age profile of offenders and victims, which has decreased from mid to late teens to early 20s down to early to mid teens."

It was announced that Mr Hitchcock - who leads for the Association of Chief Police Officers on the issue - had been appointed by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to co-ordinate police efforts across eight "hotspot" areas in England and Wales.

Earlier, Mrs Smith announced plans for young offenders caught with a knife to be confronted with stabbing victims in a fresh attempt to deter teenagers from carrying weapons.