Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what (a) sentences and (b) other outcomes were received by people aged (i) under 18 and (ii) 18 and over who were prosecuted for carrying a bladed or pointed article in a public place in each year since 2008; and if he will make a statement.

Since 2009 there has been an overall decline in knife crime. A higher proportion of people are going to prison for knife possession than in previous years and sentences are getting longer. Whilst sentencing remains a matter for the independent judiciary we continue to keep this area of the law under close scrutiny. We have already introduced new offences of threatening with a knife in a public place or school under the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012. We are currently legislating in the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill to make it clear that cautions should no longer be used for knife possession offences for adults and we are exploring further changes to how we tackle knife offences.

The latest available figures on the outcomes by age group for offences involving carrying a knife or offensive weapon are available in table 2 and annex table 1 of the Knife Possession Sentencing Quarterly Brief October – December 2013 which was published on 13^th March 2014. The quarterly bulletin is available from the Ministry of Justice website at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/knife-possession-sentencing-quarterly

The figures provided have been drawn from an extract of the Police National Computer (PNC) data held by the Department. The PNC holds details of all convictions and cautions given for recordable offences committed in England and Wales. In addition, as with any large scale recording system the PNC is subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.