Weapons in Schools (1509A/23)
Request
- The number of pupils aged 18 and under found in possession of offensive weapons such as knives, pellet guns, hammers etc on school premises (nursery, primary and secondary) in the academic years 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 so far.
- The above information should be broken down by date/month of incident, age of pupil, and description of the weapon.
- It should also include what the police response was (arrest, warning etc), and whether the weapon was used to commit another crime, such as assault against a pupil or teacher.
Response
Please find attached our response. In relation to question 3 we are unable to say if a weapon was used to commit another crime, but we have provided information recorded as believed but not seen, carried but not used and used as a threat as this is the only information that we are able to provide in relation to this.
Please note that these data should be interpreted with caution. Comparing numbers of incidents/crimes can be misleading and does not necessarily indicate the likelihood of someone being a victim of crime. In addition, the number of incidents/crimes recorded in an area over a period of time can be influenced by a number of factors. Consequently statistics on incidents/crimes for one period may not necessarily be a good indicator of future incidents in that area.
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.