Knife and offensive weapon sentencing: January to March 2018
Statistical release on trends in cautioning and sentencing of knife or offensive weapon offences.
Documents
Details
This bulletin presents key statistics describing the trends in the number of knife or offensive weapon offences receiving cautions and convictions in England and Wales. This bulletin does not cover all knife or offensive weapon crimes (offences involving a knife or offensive weapon) as published by the Office for National Statistics.
The information presented combines all three types of knife or offensive weapon offences; possession of an article with a blade or point in a public place or on school premises; possession of an offensive weapon without lawful authority or reasonable excuse in a public place or on school premises and offences of aggravated possession of a knife or offensive weapon.
Three extra documents accompany this bulletin:
- An interactive table tool showing the criminal history of knife or offensive weapon offenders, giving breakdowns by gender and ethnic appearance as well as previous offences, disposal, age group and year.
- An interactive Sankey diagram (a type of flow diagram, in which the width of the arrows is shown proportionally to the number each represents) presenting information on outcomes and criminal history of offenders sentenced or cautioned for a knife or offensive weapon offence.
- A complete set of tables.
Alongside this bulletin, we are also publishing ‘Examining the Educational Background of Young Knife Possession Offenders’; experimental statistics on the educational background of those offenders dealt with for weapons possession offences during their childhood, who reached the end of Key Stage 4 in 2012/13. This report has been produced using data from the 2015 data share between the Ministry of Justice and Department for Education. It is accompanied by a set of supplementary tables.
Both the bulletin and analytical paper were produced and handled by the ministry’s analytical professionals and production staff. For the bulletin pre-release access of up to 24 hours is granted to the following persons:
Ministry of Justice:
Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice; Minister of State for Justice; Permanent Secretary; Minister and Permanent Secretary Private Secretaries (8); Special Advisors (2); Deputy Director for Bail, Sentencing and Release Policy; Head of Criminal Law & Sentencing Policy Unit; Policy advisor in Criminal Law & Sentencing Policy Unit; Policy advisors in Youth Sentencing (2); Head of News and relevant press officers (4).
Home Office:
Home Secretary; Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Vulnerability, Safeguarding and Countering Extremism; Minister Private Secretaries (2); Lead Statistician; relevant press officers (2) and policy leads (2).
Cabinet Office:
Private Secretary to the Prime Minister; Policy Advisor, Justice and Devolution; Desk Officer, Economic and Domestic Affairs Secretariat.
For the analytical paper pre-release access of up to 24 hours was granted to the following persons:
Ministry of Justice:
Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice; Minister of State for Justice; Permanent Secretary; Minister and Permanent Secretary Private Secretaries (14); Special Advisors (2); Deputy Director for Bail, Sentencing and Release Policy; Head of Criminal Law & Sentencing Policy Unit; Policy advisor in Criminal Law & Sentencing Policy Unit; Policy advisors in Youth Sentencing (2); Head of News and relevant press officers (4); Director General, Justice Analysis and Offender Policy Group; Director, Analysis and Data Driven Department and Culture Change.
Department for Education:
Secretary of State for Education; Minister of State for School Standards; Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Children and Families; Private Offices; Special Advisors; Press Officers (2); Policy Advisors (5)
Home Office:
Press Officer
The report is released by the Ministry of Justice and produced in accordance with arrangements approved by the UK Statistics Authority.