Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many (a) functional and (b) imitation firearms have been discovered (i) during entry security procedures and (ii) within a prison unconnected to entry security procedures, in each of the last five years.
The table below provides details of firearms incidents, broken down by year from March 2016 to present and the number attributable to point of entry and in prison discoveries. It is important to note that during the period we only discovered one ballistic weapon in 2020, with the remainder of incidents relating to the discovery of air guns, Taser and CS spray. The vast majority of in prison discoveries where made during routine searches of prisoner accommodation or through acting on intelligence processed through our systems.
Firearms Incidents | ||||
Year | Imitation | Real | At point of entry | Within prison |
2016 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
2017 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
2018 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 5 |
2019 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
2020 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 3 |
2021 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Totals | 11 | 10 | 8 | 13 |