Bladed Weapons In Schools - 285/21

Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')

As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of access to information held at the time of a request, by a Public Authority (including the Police), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.

You asked:

This request related to all types of bladed weapons.

For the three years ending April 2020, can you please provide an up-to-date, month-by-month, year-by-year, breakdown of:

1. The number of crimes, where the offence location is recorded as 'school', for the following offences:
• Possess offensive weapon
• Possess offensive weapon on school premises
• Threaten with offensive weapon on school premises
• Possess firearm etc with intent to endanger life
• GBH Wounding.
• Attempted murder/murder

2. The type of weapon used

3. The age and gender of the offenders and whether they were charged.

4. The name and/or area (town, city etc) of the school, where possible

In Response:

Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Corporate Development Department of Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held by Northumbria Police.

I am able to disclose the located information to you as follows in the document attached, which should satisfy your queries..

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.