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Offensive Weapons

Answer

[holding answer 13 June 2008]: The arrests collection undertaken by the Ministry of Justice provides data on persons arrested for recorded crime (notifiable offences), by age group, gender, ethnicity, and main offence group, i.e. violence against the person, sexual offences, robbery, burglary, etc. More detailed data about specific offences do not form part of this collection.Data showing the number of defendants proceeded against and found guilty of possessing a knife in a public place in Lancashire and England from 2002 to 2006 are in the following table. Data for 2007 will be available in the autumn of 2008.The court proceedings database held by the Ministry of Justice does not hold details about the circumstances of the offences. It is therefore not possible to supply data for grievous bodily harm offences involving knives.The statistics relate to persons for whom these offences were the principal offences for which they were dealt with. When a defendant has been found guilty of two or more offences the principal offence is the offence for which the heaviest penalty is imposed. Where the same disposal is imposed for two or more offences, the offence selected is the offence for which the statutory maximum penalty is the most severe.

Number of defendants proceeded against at magistrates courts and found guilty at all courts for possessing a knife in a public place¹, in Lancashire and England, 2002 to 2006²,³
	Lancashire	England
2002
Proceeded against	127	6,611
Found guilty	98	5,082
2003
Proceeded against	159	6,624
Found guilty	136	5,165
2004
Proceeded against	188	6,987
Found guilty	161	5,612
2005
Proceeded against	182	6,988
Found guilty	150	5,727
2006
Proceeded against	169	7,268
Found guilty	144	6,018
¹ Includes the following offences;
Having an article with blade or point in public place—Criminal Justice Act 1988 S.139 as amended by Offensive Weapons Act 1996 S.3.
Having an article with blade or point on school premises—Criminal Justice Act 1988 S.139A (1)(5)(a) as added by Offensive Weapons Act 1996 S.4(1).
² These data are on the principal offence basis.
³ Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts and police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

477 c834-5W; 210909

Session

2007-08

Subjects

Offensive weapons

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk