Knife crime crackdown - failure?

The figures were realeased today regarding the levels of knife crime in the UK the result should be obvious from reading the headlines in the papers -

Knife murders increase in 10 force areas targeted by £7million crackdown on knife crime - Telegraph
EXCLUSIVE: Killings up in hotspots - Mirror
Stabbing deaths rise during high-profile £12million anti-knife campaign - Daily Mail
Deaths up during anti-knife drive - BBC News
Deaths on rise as government anti-knife crime strategy fails - Guardian

Other than not being sure how much the campaign cost I think that's pretty clear - it's a failure. Except read those headlines again and note the specifics. They're not talking about knife crime in its entirety, merely the fatalities that have resulted from it. Indeed if you work past the headlines every single news report I've listed goes on to say that overall knife crime has decreased.

It's also interesting to note that none of the reports compare more than two years' fatality rates stating only that it went from 119 to 126 (23+103 from 23+96). So what were the figures for the year before that, because if it was 111 or below then the increase from 06/07 to 07/08 would be greater than the increase from 07/08 to 08/09 which would indicate that the scheme might have had some success.

Except we don't get those figures because that might ruin the story that this project was a failure; a £7/12 million failure from our useless government and would prevent the newspapers' stoking up our fear that gangs of 'feral youths' are out there stalking us with machetes. Scare story and a government failure - facts wilt before its power.