Knives: Convictions

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many people aged under 21 years have been convicted for offences related to possession of a knife in each of the last five years; and how many received (a) a caution, (b) an absolute or conditional discharge, (c) a fine, (d) a community sentence, (e) a suspended custody, (f) immediate custody and (g) another disposal. (274192)

The information requested is contained in the following table.

*Offences involving the possession of a knife or offensive weapon resulting in a caution or sentence*^1,2, committed by offenders aged under 21, England and Wales, 2004-08
	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008
Total	11,429	11,908	13,135	12,426	11,405
Caution, reprimands and final warnings	5,069	5,509	6,288	5,714	4,188
Absolute/Conditional discharge	843	737	620	519	352
Fine	697	531	403	308	246
Community sentence	3,565	3,722	4,043	4,017	4,498
Suspended sentence	4	61	285	361	479
Immediate custody	994	1,090	1,217	1,255	1,424
Other disposal	257	258	279	252	218
¹ As recorded by the police on the police national computer. ² The figures are a count of offences rather than offenders. Where an offender has been sentenced for several possession offences each sentence has been counted.

These figures have been drawn from the police’s administrative IT system, the police national computer (PNC), which, as with any large scale recording system, is subject to possible errors with data entry and processing. The figures are provisional and subject to change as more information is recorded by the police.

PNC data has been used here rather than court data, which is the usual source of published sentencing statistics. The PNC data provides more up to date figures ahead of the finalised annual court data and was used for the Ministry of Justice’s publication “Knife Crime Sentencing: Quarterly Brief” published on 12 March 2009 and available from:

http://www.justice.gov.uk/publications/knife-crime-sentencing.htm

Volume 492: debated on Thursday 14 May 2009