Assault by sharp object (page 1 of 4)

Knife crime is perceived to be a common and increasing problem in Scotland.  One way of measuring the impact of knife crime is to look at the number of deaths and emergency hospital admissions due to injury caused by an assault by a knife or other sharp object.  Injuries of this nature are thought of as "unintentional injuries" on the part of the victim.

There were 57 deaths and 1284 hospital admissions in 2006 as a result of an assault by a sharp object.  These account for almost 4% of all deaths and around 2% of all hospital admissions due to unintentional injury.  Assaults by a sharp object are also responsible for over 40% of all deaths as a result of assault and 27.5% of emergency hospital admissions due to assault.

Table 17 and figure 10  shows how these figures have varied since 1998 and how the two measures follow a broadly similar trend.

 ^{Please click on the above chart for relating tables and notes.}