Offensive Weapons on School Premises 2021-2024

Publication Number: 1567

FOI Number: 20958

 

Information Request 

I am writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to request the following information for the past three academic years (Sept 2021-Aug 2022, Sept 2022-Aug 2023 and Sept 2023 - Aug 2024):

1. The number of reported incidents of each of the following offences:
2. Threaten with an offensive weapon on school premises
3. Possession of offensive weapon on school premises without lawful authority or reasonable excuse
4. Having an article with a blade or point on school premises
5. Threaten with a blade or sharply pointed article on school premises
6. In each case, please could you give details of the type of weapon, the type of school premises involved (primary or secondary), details of who it was in possession of the weapon (for example their age, if they are a staff member or pupil), and the outcome of the offence (where known).

 

FOI Duty

First Duty – Essex Police holds some of the information relating to your request  

Second Duty – See below  

Fact - It is not possible to extract and verify all the data in your request  

Exemption - Section 12(1)  

Refusal - Section 17(5) of FOIA  

 

Reasoning – Essex Police are unable to provide a comprehensive data report to meet this request as the data is not available in a readily extractable format, nor is it held on a central log. 

With regard to Question 2, Essex Police is unable to report on the specific type of weapon in relation to each weapon on a school premises offence as this is not readily extractable information from our crime recording system. To attempt to answer this question would require a manual review of each relevant offence record to ascertain whether the specific type of weapon was detailed in the investigation notes, extracting any relevant information found and then collating it into a bespoke report.

To establish if information is held would, therefore, exceed the time and cost limits under the FOIA and would additionally qualify as the creation of data as the results cannot be processed by means of purely sorting or filtering data sources or running a database query tool. There is no requirement under the act to create data purely to answer FOI requests. 

 

Duty to assist – When refusing a request on cost (Section 12(1)/12(2)), outside of the act and in effort to assist we can provide the following 

 

Essex Police can however assist as follows: 

 

Caveat: The data is correct as at 19 November 2024 

 

Notes

- In cases where a school contains both Primary and Secondary aged children, these schools have been added to the Secondary list.

- Suspect ages are not available in all records.

- Granular data for each offence and suspect has not been provided as this may allow the identification of individuals.

 

Results

 

Numbers of Offences by Offence Type and School - 2021/22 to 2023/24

 

Primary Schools
Offence Type	2021/22 to 2023/24
Having an article with a blade or point on school/further education premises.	12
Possession of other offensive weapon on school/further education premises.	1
Threaten with a blade or sharply pointed article on school/further education premises.	5
Threaten with an offensive weapon on school/further education premises.	1
Total	19

 

Secondary Schools
Offence Type	2021/22 to 2023/24
Having an article with a blade or point on school/further education premises.	74
Possession of other offensive weapon on school/further education premises.	12
Threaten with a blade or sharply pointed article on school/further education premises.	15
Threaten with an offensive weapon on school/further education premises.	7
Total	108

 

 

Numbers of Outcomes by Offence Type - 2021/22 to 2023/24

 

	Having an article with a blade or point on school/further education premises.	Possession of other offensive weapon on school/further education premises.	Threaten with a blade or sharply pointed article on school/further education premises.	Threaten with an offensive weapon on school/further education premises.
Type 1 - Charged/Summonsed/Postal Requisition	3	0	0	0
Type 2 - Caution Youth	23	1	0	0
Type 8 - Community resolution (Crime)	17	4	1	0
Type 10 - Formal Action Against Offender is not in the Public Interest (Police)	2	0	0	0
Type 11 - Prosecution Prevented-Named Suspect Identified But Is Below The Age Of Criminal Responsibility	7	1	1	0
Type 14 - Evidential Difficulties Victim Based- Suspect Not Identified: Crime Confirmed But The Victim Either Declines Or Unable To Support Further Police Investigation To Identify The Offender	0	0	1	0
Type 15 - Named Suspect Identified: Victim Supports Police Action But Evidential Difficulties Prevent Further Action	3	0	1	1
Type 16 - Named Suspect Identified: Evidential Difficulties Prevent Further Action: Victim Does Not Support (Or Has Withdrawn Support From) Police Action	1	0	4	0
Type 18 - Investigation Complete; No Suspect Identified. Crime Investigated As Far As Reasonably Possible-Case Closed Pending Further Investigative Opportunities Becoming Available	0	0	0	2
Type 20 - Further action resulting from the crime report will be undertaken by another body or agency subject to the victim (or person acting on their behalf) being made aware of the act to be taken	7	0	4	1
Type 21 - Further investigation resulting from crime report which could provide evidence sufficient to support formal action against the suspect is not in the public interest - police decision.	1	0	0	1
Type 22 - Diversionary, educational or intervention activity, resulting from the crime report, has been undertaken and it is not in the public interest to take any further action.	22	6	9	2

 

 

Numbers of Suspects by Age - 2021/22 to 2023/24

 

Suspect Age	Number
7	2
8	2
9	6
10	4
11	3
12	5
13	12
14	8
15	1
16	2
30	1

 

Every effort is made to ensure that the data provided by Essex Police is accurate and complete. However, Essex Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not for the purposes of providing data to answer specific FOI enquiries. Please note although data can be extracted from several sources via database queries, the results may be subject to inaccuracies. Care should be taken to understand our return when considering the interpretation or further use of the data. 

 

Headline Possession of Weapons offences by district between September 2021 and August 2024 with outcomes can be found within the monthly Essex Police performance reports published by the Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner for Essex:

Essex Police Performance - Essex Police, Fire & Crime Commissioner

 

The following articles available via our publication scheme may also be of interest:

Offensive Weapons in Schools and Education Establishments 2013 to 2024 | Essex Police

Violence Against the Person on School Premises - Victim 20 or Over | Essex Police