Possession of a Bladed Article (809A/23)
Request
- How many children under the age of 18 were arrested on suspicion of possession of an article with blade or point in a public place in the years 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 respectively? Please provide a breakdown showing the number of arrests for each age group for each year (e.g. four suspects aged 14; seven suspects aged 15, etc.).
- How many children under the age of 18 were subsequently charged with the offence of Possession of an article with blade or point in a public place for each of the years 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022?
Response
Please find attached our response.
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.