A HUGE drop has been recorded in the number of people carrying and using knives in Scotland's biggest police force area.
New figures released by Strathclyde Police reveal assaults involving bladed weapons have fallen by a third in Glasgow alone over the past six years – though there are still almost four attacks every day.
The statistics, which refer to police reports on crime where the phrases "knife" or "stab" are used, have been released as part of an investigation by The Herald's sister title, the Evening Times.
The Glasgow-based paper has been crunching crime figures for every police beat in the city over the last six years.
It showed the number of people caught carrying a knife is down by 41%, which possibly may be attributed to increased police stop-and-searches.
The figures suggest that young people are increasingly moving away from Scotland's booze and blade culture.
The number of under-16s caught with a knife fell fully 75% across the whole of Strathclyde between April 2006 and March 2012. Carrying knives dropped across all age-groups.
Police and other agencies have massively targeted youth crime and gang culture across the west of Scotland in recent years with the Glasgow-based Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) winning UK-wide and international recognition for its work.
Detective Chief Superintendent John Carnochan, who heads the VRU, yesterday compared the work of the police to public health work, comparing young people to medical patients.
He said: "If we stabilise those patients, they'll be less violent.
"We need to break in to the cycle somewhere. We can make it better and we have done that, with fewer victims and less violence.
"You can't deliver the treatment until you have stabilised the patient. The police are the trauma surgeon – we can calm things down.
"But we need to do other things that deliver the success and that is about education, diversion, jobs – not just [the work of] the police."
The new figures also show overall levels of the most serious violent crimes – so-called "Group 1" offences – have halved in the city centre over the last six years.
Senior officers stress that the number of less serious crimes is also falling, dismissing any suggestion that major crimes were being reclassified as minor ones.
Jon Bannister, of Glasgow University, said: "This dramatic decline has nothing to do with the way police record crime, which hasn't changed since in 2006.
"There has been a real change on our streets. Whether we look at violence or property-related crime, it's down."
Mr Bannister believes falling decline has been caused by a combination of economic progress during the 2000s, smarter police tactics and innovative youth and community work.
However, Mr Bannister struck a note of caution. He said: "Before we get carried away with these very positive crime trends, it has to be said that crime rates in Glasgow are still higher than the Scottish average.
"Secondly, crime hasn't gone down all on its own. It has done so as a result of significant resources being deployed through well thought-through interventions. So, will these survive the recession and public spending cuts?"
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