Offensive Weapons in Education Establishments 2016 to 2021

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Keywords

Offensive, Weapons, Education, Establishments, Type, College, Secondary, School, Age, Sex, Suspect, Location, Premises, HMIC, Possession, Recorded, Academy, Gender, Outcome, Victim.

Publication Number

PUB 1070

FOI Reference Number

16488

Request Title

Offensive Weapons in Education Establishments 2016 to 2021

Date Range

01 December 2016 to 30 November 2021

Information Requested

1. How many offensive weapons were found in educational establishments in the past five years? (From 1st December 2016-30th November 2021.)

For each recorded find, please include:

- The date

- The type of offensive weapon

- The type of establishment (e.g college or secondary school)

- The age and sex of the suspect (if known and possible)

- The outcome (e.g whether there was an arrest)

2. How many crimes were recorded in educational establishments in the past five years? (From 1st December 2016-30th November 2021.)

For each recorded incident please include:

- The date

- The type of establishment (e.g college or secondary school)

- The crime type

- The age and sex of the suspect (if known and possible)

- The age and sex of the victim(s) (if known and possible given the time limitations)

Disclosure with Exemptions

Part Disclosure with Section 12 Exemption

Information Correct as at

11 January 2022

Date of Disclosure

02 February 2022

FOI 16488 Response

Having completed enquiries within Essex Police in respect of Section 1(1)(a), Essex Police does hold information relating to your request, however, the obligation of Section 1(1)(b) cannot be met as Essex Police does not hold all the information requested in a format that allows it to be retrieved within the time and cost limits of FOI.

When responding to a request for information under the terms of the FOIA, a public authority is not obliged to provide information if the authority estimates that the cost of the retrieval of the information requested would be in excess of £450 (equivalent to 18 hours work). The costs criteria relates to a request in its entirety, which means that if we cannot retrieve all of the information requested within the costs limit, we are not obliged to retrieve any of the information requested.

Section 12(1) of the FOIA states that a public authority is not obliged to:

“…comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.”

The following explanation outlines the difficulty Essex Police has in answering your request:

In relation to Question 1, Essex Police are unable to accurately extract the level of detail in relation to the type of offensive weapon found in educational establishments for the requested periods from our current systems. Essex Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not primarily for the production of statistical information for FOI responses. This request would entail manually extracting the requested data and reviewing each crime record one by one to establish if information is held as there is no field where the offensive weapon type is recorded. To establish if information is held would, therefore, exceed the time and cost limits under the FOIA and would 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.

Consequently, and to this extent, Essex Police are exempt from the duty to provide information you have requested under the provisions of Section 12(1) of the FOIA. Therefore, and in accordance with Section 17(1) of the FOIA, this communication must act as a refusal notice to provide all of the information that could be interpreted as being captured by this part of your request.

Having said that and in an effort to assist, although excess cost removes the force’s obligations under the FOIA, Essex Police can confirm the following:

Caveats:

The data is correct as at 11 January 2022.

Dates: 01 December 2016 to 30 November 2021.

Please note the way the information is gathered is by searching text in the Location Premises Field Name and, therefore, in some instances the location data for School/Academy/College may not be in reference to an educational establishment and could be the name of a road for example if an offence took place on ‘School Road’ this will be returned in the filtered results. However, this method is still the best approach to providing the most complete picture of results. Please note that any keyword search may not be entirely accurate and any results would not necessarily answer your submission, and, therefore, could be highly inaccurate and misleading.

Data:

In relation to Question 1, we are unable to provide data on the type of offensive weapon found as this is not a recorded field. However, we have provided the number of Possession of Weapons Offences. The HMIC Crime Tree Level 3 Category has been used to select POSSESSION OF WEAPONS OFFENCES.

In relation to Question 2, the HMIC Crime Tree Level 3 Category has also been used for the Offence Type.

1. How many offensive weapons were found in educational establishments in the past five years? (From 1st December 2016-30th November 2021.)

Between 01 December 2016 and 30 November 2021 there were 242 Possession of Weapons Offences.

Please see below, the Location breakdowns:

Location	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021
Academy	1	6	9	15	16	17
College	1	7	5	4	0	0
School	2	36	33	46	16	28
Total	4	49	47	65	32	45

Please see below, the Suspect Age Group breakdowns:

Suspect Age Group	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021
Under 18	4	44	40	63	29	41
18-29	0	3	0	0	0	0
30-39	0	1	0	0	1	0
40-49	0	0	0	1	0	1
Not Recorded	0	1	7	1	2	3
Total	4	49	47	65	32	45

Please see below, the Suspect Gender breakdowns:

Suspect Gender	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021
Male	4	42	37	57	27	31
Female	0	6	3	7	3	9
Not Recorded	0	1	7	1	2	5
Total	4	49	47	65	32	45

Please see below, the Outcome breakdowns:

Outcome	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021
Type 1 - Charged/Summonsed/Postal Requisition	0	6	2	4	2	0
Type 10 - Formal Action Against Offender is not in the Public Interest (Police)	0	5	2	6	0	2
Type 11 - Prosecution Prevented-Named Suspect Identified But Is Below The Age Of Criminal Responsibility	0	3	1	2	0	1
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	3	0	0	2
Type 15 - Named Suspect Identified: Victim Supports Police Action But Evidential Difficulties Prevent Further Action	0	4	2	6	3	2
Type 16 - Named Suspect Identified: Evidential Difficulties Prevent Further Action: Victim Does Not Support (Or Has Withdrawn Support From) Police Action	0	4	1	6	2	0
Type 18 - Investigation Complete; No Suspect Identified. Crime Investigated As Far As Reasonably Possible-Case Closed Pending Further Investigative Opportunities Becoming Available	0	1	3	1	2	1
Type 2 - Caution Youth	0	5	10	5	7	3
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	1	3	8	5	3	8
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.	0	0	0	2	1	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.	0	0	0	6	5	11
Type 8 - Community resolution (Crime)	3	18	15	22	7	11
Ongoing Investigations	0	0	0	0	0	3
Total	4	49	47	65	32	45

2. How many crimes were recorded in educational establishments in the past five years? (From 1st December 2016-30th November 2021.)

Between 01 December 2016 and 30 November 2021 there were 11,285 offences recorded in educational establishments.

Please see below, the Location breakdowns:

Location	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021
Academy	19	456	498	660	379	477
College	13	252	192	279	151	159
School	113	1481	1720	1971	1138	1327
Total	145	2189	2410	2910	1668	1963

Please see below, the Offence Type breakdowns:

Offence Type	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021
ALL OTHER THEFT OFFENCES	14	193	191	223	92	74
ARSON	0	9	8	15	15	13
BICYCLE THEFT	8	110	84	96	49	50
BURGLARY - BUSINESS AND COMMUNITY	0	107	120	105	62	42
BURGLARY - NON DOMESTIC	12	40	0	0	0	0
BURGLARY - RESIDENTIAL	0	10	8	14	13	5
CRIMINAL DAMAGE	5	149	162	191	131	96
MISC CRIMES AGAINST SOCIETY	2	53	69	104	56	62
OTHER SEXUAL OFFENCES	4	124	149	169	123	196
POSSESSION OF DRUGS	3	29	29	44	28	21
POSSESSION OF WEAPONS OFFENCES	4	49	47	65	32	45
PUBLIC ORDER OFFENCES	21	278	354	385	208	262
RAPE	8	15	22	27	10	19
ROBBERY - PERSONAL	0	7	10	17	7	8
SHOPLIFTING	1	1	3	1	1	3
THEFT FROM THE PERSON	1	16	9	10	4	5
TRAFFICKING OF DRUGS	0	3	3	3	4	4
VEHICLE OFFENCES	2	57	62	49	36	19
VIOLENCE WITH INJURY	26	451	423	522	274	358
VIOLENCE WITHOUT INJURY	34	488	657	870	523	681
Total	145	2189	2410	2910	1668	1963

Please see below, the Suspect Age Group breakdowns:

Suspect Age Group	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021
Under 18	45	815	956	1281	688	918
18-29	4	147	105	135	101	93
30-39	8	133	170	160	97	99
40-49	7	78	81	97	57	59
50-59	1	46	34	25	24	39
60-69	0	16	10	18	4	8
70+	0	5	5	5	2	4
Not Recorded	80	949	1049	1189	695	743
Total	145	2189	2410	2910	1668	1963

Please see below, the Suspect Gender breakdowns:

Suspect Gender	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021
Male	46	850	942	1159	694	799
Female	19	384	403	542	268	392
Not Recorded/Unspecified	80	955	1065	1209	706	772
Total	145	2189	2410	2910	1668	1963

Please see below, the Victim Age Group breakdowns:

Victim Age Group	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021
Under 18	77	1094	1251	1542	872	1118
18-29	10	160	161	203	107	122
30-39	10	163	202	215	113	176
40-49	15	174	190	208	127	121
50-59	1	89	93	117	70	81
60-69	1	24	27	25	17	14
70+	0	4	8	12	3	5
Not Recorded	31	481	478	588	359	326
Total	145	2189	2410	2910	1668	1963

Please see below, the Victim Gender breakdowns:

Victim Gender	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021
Male	53	881	999	1126	632	694
Female	60	814	912	1160	665	906
Not Recorded/Unspecified/Unknown	32	494	499	624	371	363
Total	145	2189	2410	2910	1668	1963

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 a number of 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.

The Force Information Management Board chaired by the Deputy Chief Constable has oversight of the Force wide programme of work to improve the quality of Force data. This work has identified data quality leads in all key areas of the business including the Crime and Public Protection Command. Liaison between the Force Data Quality Team and the Crime and Public Protection Command lead for data quality will identify and resolve issues through a variety of mechanisms to ensure regular and appropriate supervisory oversight.

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Offensive Weapons in Education Establishments 2016 to 2021

Keywords

Publication Number

FOI Reference Number

Request Title

Date Range

Information Requested

Disclosure with Exemptions

Information Correct as at

Date of Disclosure

Related Documents/Links

FOI 16488 Response