FOI 866-2023 / Sept 2023 / Knife crime
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 866-2023
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 19th September 2023 as follows:
Please provide the following, under the Freedom of Information Act, for the past 5 calendar years, from 2018 to the present and where the location is a school:
Q1. The number of knife crime offences split by:
Q1a. offence type
Q1b. knife type
Q1c. What the knife was used for (ie stabbing, threatening)
Q1d. Victim and suspect demographics, including but not limited to age, gender, ethnicity and relationship between victim and suspect.
Please provide the information electronically, in Excel format.
Please provide the following information under the Freedom of Information Act for the past five calendar years from 2018 to the present.
Q2. For each year please provide the total number of knife crime incidents, split by offence and neighbourhood policing unit.
Q2a. If available, please also provide the victim and suspect demographics, including, but not limited to, age, gender, ethnicity and relationship between victim and suspect.
Please supply the information electronically and in Excel format.
Please accept my sincere apologies for the delay in providing the response to your request and for any inconvenience this may have caused. Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Please be advised that the requested information is not centrally recorded and is therefore not held in a readily retrievable format. There is no specific offence, flag or marker for ‘knife crime’, and, in order to try to provide a response to your request for information relating to knife crime in schools and by area, the following options were explored.
A search was conducted for all crimes, recorded between 2018 and 2023, where a marker of ‘Use of knife or other sharp instrument’ has been applied. This returned 3,924 crimes, which were then dip sampled. This identified that the circumstances did not only refer to the use of a knife, but also ‘sharp instruments’ such as a needle, an axe, a fork. Therefore, in order to determine which crimes related to knives it would be necessary to manually review the circumstances of each and every crime. At a conservative estimate of 2 minutes per crime to review, this would equate to in excess of 130 hours of work. Please see a calculation set out below.
3924 crimes with ‘Use of knife or other sharp instrument’ marker @ minimum 2 minutes per crime to review = 130.8 hours of work.
This does not take into consideration the further work required for the school element of the request.
A further search was therefore conducted for all crimes, recorded between 2018 and 2023, with a primary classification under Home Office Crime Recording (HOCR) code 10D - Possession of Article with Blade or Point, which incorporates the following offences:
10D - Possession of Article with Blade or Point:
- 8/26 Having an article with a blade or point in a public place.
- 8/27 Having an article with a blade or point on school/further education premises.
- 8/62 Threaten with a blade or sharply pointed article on school/further education premises.
- 8/64 Threaten with a blade or sharply pointed article in a public place.
- 8/76 Threaten a person with an article in a private place.
This search returned 761 crimes. As all offences refer to ‘an article with a blade or point’, not specifically to a knife, the results were then dip sampled. Whilst many of the crimes sampled showed that the article with a blade or point was a knife, there were many times that it was not, and instead was described as a pen, a razor blade, a pair of scissors, a piece of glass or a screwdriver. Therefore, it would also be necessary to manually review the circumstances of each and every one of these crimes to determine whether it related to a knife. At a conservative estimate of 2 minutes per crime to review, this would equate to in excess of 25 hours of work. Please see a calculation set out below.
761 crimes with 10D as primary classification @ minimum 2 minutes per crime to review = 25.36 hours of work.
Again, this does not take into consideration the further work required for the school element of the request.
Furthermore, it is important to note that where the use of an article with a blade or point has occurred alongside another more serious offence, such as robbery or assault, the relevant offence under 10D would most likely appear as an included classification rather than the primary classification. Therefore, to ensure that all relevant offences of 10D were captured, it would be necessary to search for this as a primary and included classification, potentially more than doubling the number of offences that would need manually reviewing.
In conclusion, whilst either search method could arguably be used to attempt to locate information that could be considered as ‘knife crime’, they would both exceed the amount to which we are legally required to respond, i.e., the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004. For Police forces in the UK, the "appropriate limit" is considered to be up to 18 hours of work on one request.
In accordance with Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for this part of the request, and, if one part of a request exceeds the fees limit, then Section 12 of the Act applies to the whole request.
In accordance with Section 16 of the Act, I have a duty to provide advice and assistance in relation to refining your request; however, I am unable to suggest a way to reduce the request into one which could be managed within the fees limit on this occasion. I can however advise that the above searches represent the closest method available for identifying ‘knife crime’ on the crime recording system and it may be possible to provide some information using either search:
- All crimes with a ‘Use of knife or sharp instrument’ marker applied, and a secondary search for any of these that have a location premise type of ‘school’, or
- All crimes with a primary or secondary classification of 10D - Possession of Article with Blade or Point, and a secondary search for any of these that have a location premise type of ‘school’,
Although, the results would include many offences that do not involve a knife and would not be considered as knife crime. However, should you wish us to apply one of these search methods to locate specific information, please revise and resubmit your request.
Every effort has been made to ensure that the information provided is as accurate as possible.
Your attention is drawn to the below which details your right of complaint.
Should you have any further enquiries concerning this matter, please write or email the Freedom of Information Unit quoting the reference number above.
Yours sincerely
Freedom of Information Officer
Freedom of Information Unit
Warwickshire Police
PO Box 4
Leek Wootton
Warwickshire
CV35 7QB