Blade/pointed article on school premises (429A/22)
Request
1) The number of reports which contain both the word ‘blade or point on school premises’ where the suspect was under 18. Please provide figures for the 2019/2020 and 2020/21 academic years (1 September to 31 July), broken down by age of suspect, local authority area and the name of the school (unless the name of the school is exempt from release).
2) For each of these incidents, if possible, please could you provide the outcome data (as used in the police.uk statistics)?
Clarification received 29/03/2022:
I am happy to clarify my request to ask for the ‘offences’ of the details as mentioned below.
‘having an article with a blade or point on school premises’ and ‘threaten with a blade or pointed article on school premises’
Response
Please find attached our response.
However, please be advised that in relation to the name of the school, this information would not be available under FOI as exemptions would apply (i.e. Section 40 – Personal information). Schools accommodate a specific set and number of individuals, therefore to provide this detail (especially in conjunction with other requested details) would pose a risk of identifying an individual.
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 a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.
If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.