On London Extra: Lies, damned lies and crime statistics

The Mayor hasn't been fibbing, but...plus budgets, drugs and more

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Sadiq Khan came out with some crime statistics at Mayor's Question Time yesterday. They told a story of improvement: the number of under-25s injured by knives is 24 per cent lower than it was when Khan was first elected in 2016 and, by that same measure, violence with injury as a whole is down too (by nine percent), as are homicide (by 13 per cent) and burglary (by 22 per cent).

How happy should we be? As ever, crime stats need to be handled with care. What, for example, has happened between 2016 and 2024, as distinct from since 2016, the word "since" being the one the Mayor had used?