Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 10 February 2016 to Question 26908, what steps he is taking to improve the recording of knife finds in prisons to ensure that the data is easy to use and analyse.

Finds of certain prohibited items in prisons, including knives, are recorded on the NOMS Incident Reporting System (IRS).

Until October 2015, any weapon in prison would be recorded under a miscellaneous incident type, and therefore would not provide consistent and complete information on weapon finds. In October 2015 we introduced a new incident type ‘Find’ on IRS, including a new category for ‘Weapons’, which means that separate data on weapons is now recorded.