 Some of the knives collected at the start of the amnesty in the Summer |
Knife amnesties do not work: that may come as something as a shock. But what's more shocking is that admission comes from the Metropolitan Police.
There was a slight drop in offences during the amnesty in May and June this year.
Breakfast has obtained information about the knife amnesty from the Met Police under the Freedom of Information act.
You can view the entire report via the link underneath the picture below Also this morning, we spoke to the criminologist Roger Graef and Gaynor Bell whose son was killed in a stabbing five years ago - watch again from the link to the right We asked the government to take part in Thursday's Breakfast, we were told no-one was available.
But we did hear from David Davis, the shadow Home Secretary. He said it was a "tiny" reduction and temporary.
Mr Davis acknowledged that the Conservatives had their own knife amnesty in the mid 1990s. He said amnesties by themselves were "by no means enough".
Watch David Davis's interview from the link to the right of this page  | Knife amnesty report obtained by Breakfast under the FOI Most computers will open this document automatically, but you may need Adobe Reader |
The government told Breakfast's Political Correspondent, Reeta Chakrabarti that the amnesty was just one way of reducing knife crime.
The Met's analysis, which coincided with a nationwide knife-amnesty earlier this year, showed a small reduction in knife related crimes during the operation.
But within weeks of it ending the numbers returned to previous levels.
More than 100,000 knives were handed into police forces in England, Scotland and Wales this summer during the five-week nationwide campaign and the amnesty was declared a success by ministers.
But an analysis of the concurrent but longer eight-week amnesty by the Metropolitan Police - between May and July - appears to question the effectiveness of the operation.
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