Ninety-five per cent of young people caught with knives in London are being charged rather than cautioned, marking a huge increase in the number of teenagers appearing in court as police try to tackle the growing problem.

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, urged mothers, siblings and friends to “shop” those close to them if they were carrying knives. As he announced the figures, he cited the example of one mother who rang police two weeks ago after finding a knife under her 17-year-old son’s bed. He also advised teenagers not to intervene in fights because they could get stabbed and said that his own children should “look after themselves”.

In an unprecedented focus on youth violence, more than 1,200 people have been arrested, 528 knives have been seized and 26,777 people have been searched since Operation Blunt 2 began on May 19.

More than 100 teenagers were charged with knife crimes last week, marking a significant shift away from the culture of giving young people a “slap on the wrist”, Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said that in September last year, 30 per cent of young people were being cautioned for those offences. He said: “Last week that was 5 per cent. So 95 per cent of those who are being arrested, when there’s sufficient evidence, are charged rather than cautioned. That was 105 people last week.”

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He added: “If you are out and about you are more likely to be stopped and searched than you’ve ever been before. If you are out with a knife you are almost certain to be arrested, charged and put in front of the courts.” He also said that he wanted to track each case through the courts to see what happened to them.

As they were speaking, detectives were hunting for the alleged female killer of a 28-year-old woman who was stabbed to death outside a super-market in Peckham, southeast London. Dee Willis suffered stab wounds to her upper body during the attack late on Tuesday night.

Police raided a house soon after, looking for the woman suspect, but she had gone. It is believed that the two women had been drinking earlier and had an argument that continued when they met again in the evening. The murder came less than three days after the 16-year-old Ben Kinsella was stabbed to death in Islington, North London, the seventeenth teenager to die violently in the capital this year.

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