Scotland Yard has drawn up a hit list of London’s 50 most prolific knife offenders in a new attempt to stem the surge in blade offences across the capi- tal, a chief constable revealed today.

Alf Hitchcock, who leads the nationwide fight against stabbing crimes for the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said officers in London would use the list of “habitual knife carriers” to “seek out offenders” and catch them before they were able to use their weapons.

He added that the Met was also using an “Al Capone” approach — referring to the use of tax evasion charges to bring the late Chicago gangster to justice - by looking for other offences the prolific knife criminals had committed so officers can re- move them from the streets.

Chief Constable Hitchcock’s disclosure, in an interview with the Standard, follows statistics showing that knife crime in London rose by 14 per cent in 12 months.

Already this year two teenagers have been knifed to death in the capital — after 13 were fatally stabbed in 2016 among an overall total of 61 blade killings.

The dangers posed by persistent knife carriers was also highlighted by the jailing last year of 17-year-old Blaise Lewinson for hacking Stefan Appleton, also 17, to death with a Zombie Killer machete.

Lewinson was given a life term for manslaughter over the killing in an Islington park. An Old Bailey judge des- cribed him as a dangerous offender who was fascinated by illegal knives.

The court also heard that six months before the killing Lewinson was caught with a lock knife at a McDonald’s restaurant, despite having completed a blade crime prevention programme.

While on remand awaiting trial, he was also discovered carrying makeshift weapons in prison.

To prevent further such tragedies, Chief Constable Hitchcock said Scotland Yard had developed an “intelligence database” of London’s most prolific knife offenders as part its strategy to reduce the peril of blade carriers on the city’s streets.

“The Met has a list of a top 50 people who are habitual knife carriers and that has allowed it to target them,” he said.

“Officers going out on patrol will seek out those offenders and where there are reasonable grounds to search them they will do so, because they know these offenders — and you already have on the database how many times these people have carried knives and what activities they are engaged in.

“The other thing is that if these people have other offences that are outstanding — perhaps warrants for other criminality — officers can target them with almost the Al Capone strategy, by arresting them for other offen- ces not knife-related. That is a disruptive approach.

“The key to enforcement is to target these habitual knife carriers. Once somebody has carried once they are more likely to carry again.

“So instead of trying to target in a more random way, target in a more focused way those people you have caught once or twice before because they are clearly not getting the message and are going to carry on doing it because it has become a lifestyle for them.”

Mr Hitchcock, Chief Constable of the Ministry of Defence Police and a former Met officer, said that most of those carrying knives were not gang members and that education remained the best way to deter most from continuing their dangerous habit.

But he warned that police action remained the only viable response to a minority who were “off the moral compass” and determined to carry knives to inflict violence on others.

He added: “There is a hard-core group who, whatever education you give them, are just not going to respond to it. They’re the habitual knife carriers. They are going to carry whatever you do. It has become their way of life.

“They are a small but significant number. There are groups of people who are off the far right of the moral compass. They seem to think it is acceptable. They will always argue that carrying is for protection.

"The reality is that the majority carrying in these circumstances are not carrying for protection, they are carrying because they are more likely to be of a violent background, to be violent and more likely to commit an offence with it.

“The only way to stop them is police enforcement.”

Chief Constable Hitchcock said another source of concern was that the “peak” age for carrying knives was “getting younger” and now ranged from “14 or 13” to about 17.

He said this was “quite worrying” and suggested that “you’ve got a group of people probably being influenced by their siblings, by their peer group, and carrying, which is not a good trend”.

Today’s disclosures come as Mayor Sadiq Khan prepares to unveil a new knife crime strategy for London. He has already promised better prevention measures and tougher enforcement action against those who break the law on knife sales to juveniles.