The findings come a month after three men were found guilty of stabbing 16-year-old Ben Kinsella to death. He was stabbed 11 times while celebrating the end of his GCSE exams in Holloway, North London, in June last year.
Police were questioning three people on Saturday after two men died of stab wounds in Gosport, Hampshire, on Friday.
Ian Johnston, president of the Police Superintendents’ Association, said: “These statistics show what everyone had feared: that knife crime is spreading.
By Ben Leach and Matthew Robinson

The 82-year-old woman pensioner, named locally as Ann Driscoll, staggered more than 100 yards along the street in an effort to get home to her housebound husband.
She had nothing stolen from her and detectives fear she may have been the victim of a motiveless knife attacker.
By Heidi Blake

The two main government sponsored sources of annual crime statistics for England and Wales are;-  
"RECORDED CRIME STATISTICS" (crimes recorded by the Police)
"BRITISH CRIME SURVEY" (crimes as experienced by a representative group of people surveyed)
Because of the way that they are compiled, these two sets of statistics often conflict, with each showing different trends. Whilst they offer the best guide available to the public, neither set of statistics is perfect. For example, the latest reports are in direct conflict over the key issue of violent crime,  the British Crime Survey indicates violent crime to be down 11% on the previous year, whereas the Recorded Crime Statistics reflect a 7% increase!

RECORDED CRIME STATISTICS - it is generally accepted that in any year, a high percentage of crimes are simply not reported to the police for a variety of reasons. Government guidelines also mean that not all incidents reported to the police, need to be recorded for statistical purposes.

BRITISH CRIME SURVEY - These statistics are based on the experiences of what is hoped to be a typically representative group of the population - however the current number of people surveyed is 40,000 per year, which is obviously a small number considered against a total population of around 60 million. 
A further complication is that the basis of both sets of statistics have changed over recent years, i.e. until 2002, the survey group size for the British Crime Survey, was just a miniscule 20,000 people, but this has now been increased to 40,000. Police guidelines have also changed, meaning that some crimes not previously recorded, now are, whilst others have been reclassified and are now recorded separately, etc.
Such changes, make it almost impossible to realistically track longer term trends from the previously published information. It must also be recognised that inevitably, by the time that the official statistics have been compiled, checked and published they are already some 18 months or so out of date.
Note; other sources of information drawn on to prepare this page, include youth surveys, Mori polls, media such as BBC News and the national press, etc. Such surveys are typically based on relatively small numbers of respondents (i.e. youth survey; 5,000 teenagers between ages 11 & 16 polled), whilst press and media frequently focus on a single or limited group of incidents at any time. For further information, simply going to a search engine such as 'google'  and using search phrases such as 'knife culture in Britain', 'Knife crime' or similar search terms will generate hundreds of thousands of pages to sift through so you can easily keep yourself up to date.

Current initiatives include:
Legislation - a government bill currently in the House of Lords features legislation to prohibit the sale of knives to anyone under the age of 18
Knife amnesty - these are designed to take knives off the street - although in reality, it is the law abiding citizens rather than the target groups which are more likely to surrender weapons.
Police Operations - such as operations Blunt and Shield involve the rapid and random deployment of metal detectors in public places such as stations, schools, etc. with strong police backup. The purpose being to identify and arrest anyone carrying illegal weapons. 
Many schools are already using or considering the use of metal detectors to detect pupils carrying knives to school, or to deter them from doing so.

Whilst the above activities are moves in the right direction, much more needs to be done;
- At present whilst the law  provides for the imprisonment for up to 2 years for anyone illegally carrying a knife (up to 4 years if it's considered an offensive weapon), yet the implementation of any prison sentence at all appears almost non existent.  

Many people support the action group run by the parents of Luke Walmsley (the schoolboy who was stabbed to death in 2003), in calling for a mandatory minimum sentence of 5 years for carrying a knife. This would put it on a par with the penalty for carrying a gun, and could therefore be an effective deterrent. There are however there are obvious practical implications for the implementation of such measures, not least of which is that our prisons are already at bursting point, - with judges calling for fewer people to be imprisoned rather than more!

Without doubt, education has to be a key ingredient, if we are to effectively  tackle the current knife culture.
The most at risk group are young males, up to the age of 24 years.
Whilst some youths carry knives to make them 'feel big' or to 'earn respect' most young people confess to carrying a knife for protection. 
Carrying a knife is certainly not cool or manly, in fact anyone carrying a knife to make them important in the eyes of their peers, is clearly demonstrating just how inadequate they really feel. 
Carrying a knife for self defence is equally misguided and significantly increases the risk of violence against the carrier (and even the risk of his/her own weapon being turned against them). 
Schools, government information films, etc., can all assist in educating and spreading the message - but one thing is for sure, whatever their age, our children must be made aware of the dangers of carrying weapons. 
And at the end of the day, as parents we must also accept responsibility and play a key role in educating our children, after all, whether they are 4 or 24 they are precious and among the most important things in our life. 
Whilst all of the above could help to improve the situation, all attempts to tackle the issue can only achieve real success in a government lead environment of ZERO TOLERANCE and MEANINGFUL PENALTIES
   

-  Zero Tolerance of sales of knives to the under 16 year olds
      (the last time anyone was jailed for selling a knife to an 
        under 16 year old was 9 years ago - in 1997!) 
  
  -  Zero Tolerance of knives in schools

    -  Zero Tolerance of carrying knives on the street

    -  Zero Tolerance of the culture of violence