Offensive Weapons: Sentencing

(asked on 1st July 2019) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people were given an immediate custodial sentence for possession of an offensive weapon in each year since 2007; and of those people how many had (a) no, (b) one to four, (c) five to 10 and (d) 11 or more previous cautions or sentences for carrying an offensive weapon.


Answered by
Edward Argar Portrait
Edward Argar
Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
This question was answered on 4th July 2019

The information requested is provided in the table below.

Please note that 2007 data has not been included as the time series data on the number of possession of offensive weapon offences used in the knife possession bulletin is only available from quarter 4 in 2007, so a full year’s data is not available.

Number of offenders1 given immediate custody for a possession of an offensive weapon offence by year and number of previous2,3 convictions or cautions for the same offence, England and Wales4, 2008 to 2018.

Number of offenders

Year

Number of previous convictions and cautions

Total

0

1 to 4

5 to 10

11 or more

2008

1,660

533

1

0

2,194

2009

1,715

509

5

0

2,229

2010

1,460

421

3

0

1,884

2011

1,552

480

2

0

2,034

2012

1,340

454

2

0

1,796

2013

1,195

349

3

0

1,547

2014

1,193

362

2

0

1,557

2015

1,286

391

1

0

1,678

2016

1,490

478

2

0

1,970

2017

1,543

534

2

0

2,079

2018

1,416

505

0

0

1,921

Source: Ministry of Justice extract of the Police National Computer.

Notes:

1) Each offender is counted only once in each year they were given an immediate custodial sentence for possession of an offensive weapon, but may appear in multiple years.

2) Previous occasions on which the offences for which the offender was cautioned or convicted included possession of an offensive weapon, as counted on the last occasion in each year that the offender was given an immediate custodial sentence for offences including possession of an offensive weapon.

3) Previous sentencing occasions may have resulted in an immediate custodial sentence.

4) England and Wales includes all 43 police force areas plus the British Transport Police.

Reticulating Splines