UK to spend £15m over three years on AI-enhanced crime maps to target knife-crime hotspots
The UK government will invest £15 million over the next three years to upgrade national crime mapping in England and Wales, part of a broader push to target knife-crime hotspots and deliver interventions where they are most needed. The Home Office says its national mapping tool divides England and Wales into 1.46 million hexagons of about 0.1 square kilometres.
It reports that all police-recorded knife crimes from April 2024 to March 2025 occurred in fewer than 2.5 percent of those hexagons. UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) says it can improve data visualisation and analysis of police-recorded crime data, incorporate additional datasets, and use AI to strengthen pattern recognition across the tool.
Although 2.5 percent of England and Wales may sound small, it is also the total area covered by the Metropolitan Police, Greater Manchester Police and West Midlands Police forces, which between them record 43 percent of knife crimes.
Examples in the Home Office policy paper show sharp differences even within city centres: a hexagon covering Leicester Square and Trafalgar Square recorded more than 45 knife crimes between April 2024 and March 2025, while a nearby hexagon including Long Acre in Covent Garden saw fewer than five.
In Birmingham, three neighbouring hexagons that include the Grand Central and Bullring shopping centres each recorded 18 or 19 knife crimes in that period, while two adjoining hexagons saw fewer than five.
In its Protecting Lives, Building Hope policy paper—designed to support an ambition to halve knife crime—the Home Office says that by seeing incidents at a micro-geography, local partners can pinpoint specific streets, times and drivers of crime and direct the right mix of policing, prevention and services to those places.
The paper says the government spent £5 million last year on hyperlocal knife-crime pilots in 11 police force areas and plans to spend £26.25 million this year across 27 forces. Interventions can include police patrols at locations and times when knife crime often occurs, greater use of knife-detecting wands and arches, and more CCTV, including for retrospective facial recognition.
The paper also references the Home Office’s expansion of facial recognition (LFR) from 10 to 50 vans across England and Wales, first announced in January. Last month, Essex Police suspended its use of LFR after a Cambridge University report found the system was more likely to identify Black people than those from other ethnic groups on a watchlist.
Looking ahead, the policy paper says UKRI will undertake research into technology to prevent knife crime by identifying behaviour that suggests people intend to commit violence with knives. This, it states, could provide staff in places such as shopping centres, train stations and late-night venues with clearer guidance on what to look for and could also help ensure stop and search powers are deployed more accurately.