How have per capita knife homicide rates in the US, Canada, and the UK changed over the last decade (2015-2024)?

1. UK picture: clear data on counts, not always on rates

Official UK reporting (ONS/Home Office) shows 262 homicides by knife or other sharp instruments in the year ending March 2024 — an 8% increase on the previous year — and that sharp instruments were used in 46% of the 570 homicides recorded in 2023/24 ^[1]. ONS publications and related briefings provide year‑by‑year counts and breakdowns (including age and weapon type) up to March 2024 ^{[1] [4]}. Several secondary summaries note longer trends (for example that the proportion of homicides involving sharp instruments has fluctuated over the past decade), but the provided sources do not include a consistent per‑100,000 population time series for 2015–2024 to compute exact per‑capita rates across the decade ^{[1] [5] [4]}.

2. US picture in the provided material: weapon breakdowns but not a neat knife‑rate trend

The supplied material includes an industry/statistics summary that lists murder victims by weapon in the U.S. (Statista) but does not present a complete annual per‑capita knife‑homicide series for 2015–2024 in the excerpts provided ^[2]. Older comparative reporting (2016–2017 snapshots) has cited knife homicide rates per million for specific years — for example a five‑year comparison around 2016 that reported roughly 4.96 knife homicides per million in the U.S. for 2016 — but that is a single‑year snapshot rather than a 2015–2024 trend and is drawn from media analysis rather than a complete official time series in the supplied sources ^[6]. Therefore, available sources do not permit a precise statement about how U.S. per‑capita knife homicide rates moved year‑by‑year from 2015 through 2024 ^{[2] [6]}.

3. Canada: reporting gap in the supplied sources

Among the provided documents there are general Canada crime pages and cross‑country comparisons (NationMaster) and global homicide tables (Wikipedia/UNODC derived), but none in the set supplies an explicit annual per‑100,000 series for knife homicides in Canada across 2015–2024. The search results therefore lack the needed Canadian knife‑specific per‑capita time series, and available sources do not mention a Canada 2015–2024 knife‑homicide trend ^{[7] [3]}.

4. Cross‑country comparability problems and why precise comparisons are risky

International comparability is hampered by differences in definitions (some sources include “sharp objects” beyond knives), recording practices, and publication timing; UNODC‑based summaries and media comparisons note these issues and caution that weapon‑specific shares of homicide vary greatly by region ^{[8] [3]}. The provided material highlights that Europe records a larger share of homicides with knives while North America has a higher firearms share — but percentage shares alone do not convert to per‑capita knife homicide rates without consistent count and population denominators for each year ^{[8] [6]}.

5. What the evidence in these sources does show, and what it doesn’t

Evidence in the supplied UK sources shows a recent increase in knife homicides in the year to March 2024 (262 cases, +8%) and a concentration of knife risk among younger victims (teens disproportionately affected) ^{[1] [9]}. The supplied US and Canada items mention weapon breakdowns or broader homicide listings but do not report a full 2015–2024 per‑capita knife homicide series; therefore any definitive cross‑national trend claim for 2015–2024 is not supportable from the provided material ^{[2] [7] [3]}.

6. How to get a definitive answer

To produce the decade trend you need: official annual counts of homicides specifically by knife/sharp instrument for each country (or the closest category) and mid‑year population estimates, then compute rates per 100,000 for 2015–2024. For England & Wales, ONS/Home Office Homicide Index tables already provide the counts up to March 2024 ^{[1] [4]}. For the U.S., seek the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports or CDC NVSS weapon‑specific matrices; for Canada, seek Statistics Canada homicide‑by‑weapon tables. Those specific datasets are not present in the set of sources you supplied ^{[1] [2] [7]}.

Limitations: this analysis uses only the provided search results; where those results lack direct annual per‑capita figures for 2015–2024 I have noted that gap rather than infer values ^{[1] [2] [7]}.