2022/25030 - Knives in Schools
REQUEST
Please provide me…
1) The number of reports which contain both the word ‘blade or point on school premises’ where the suspect was under 18. Please provide figures for the 2019/2020 and 2020/21 academic years (1 September to 31 July), broken down by age of suspect, local authority area and the name of the school (unless the name of the school is exempt from release).
2) For each of these incidents, if possible, please could you provide the outcome data (as used in the police.uk statistics)?
If any information is redacted from the report because it falls under an exemption to the FOI act, please label each redaction separately with the reason for the redaction under the act.
RESPONSE
1) The number of reports which contain both the word ‘blade or point on school premises’ where the suspect was under 18. Please provide figures for the 2019/2020 and 2020/21 academic years (1 September to 31 July), broken down by age of suspect, local authority area and the name of the school (unless the name of the school is exempt from release).
The tables above provide information based on a keyword search of ‘school’ in recorded crimes between the dates 1st of September 2019 to 31st of July 2020 and the 1st of September 2020 to 31st of July 2021. We have then conducted a keyword search using the terms ‘blade’, ‘bladed article’ and ‘knife’ on the summary of each offence, with the intention of reviewing the ones highlighted as containing the key word to check it met the requirements of the request (checking it was relating to blade on school premises). The key word search is restricted to the summaries, as a key word search of the full data log is not available. If the key words were not mentioned in the summaries, then it would not be highlighted for us to check.
Please note, the ages that are provided in the tables are the only ages below 18 years old that were recorded as crimes for the keyword search ‘blade’, ‘bladed article’ and ‘knife’ on school premises. Therefore, ages that were not recorded are not included in the tables. It is not possible to provide the name of the school, as this could potentially identify victims along with other information already available in the public domain.
Section 40 third party detail
The exemption applicable to the information you have requested for this question can be found at Section 40(2) Personal Information, of the Act and this refusal notice is issued under Section 17.
Gwent Police is withholding the information you have requested on the basis that the exemption contained in s 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act applies in that the information you have requested is personal data of third parties and the disclosure of the data would breach one of the principles contained in the Data Protection Act. The relevant principle is the first principle which states that:
Personal data shall be processed fairly and lawfully and in particular shall not be processed unless -
(a) at least one of the conditions in Schedule 2 is met and
(b) in the case of sensitive personal data, at least one of the conditions in Schedule 3 is met
It is only necessary to consider (a) in respect of the information requested. The relevant condition in Schedule 2 is condition 6 which states that:
"The processing is necessary for the purposes of legitimate interests pursued by the data controller or by the third party or parties to whom the data are disclosed, except where the processing is unwarranted in any particular case by reason of prejudice to the rights and freedoms or legitimate interests of the data subject"
2) For each of these incidents, if possible, please could you provide the outcome data (as used in the police.uk statistics)?
The table above provides the outcomes of the offences for both academic years. Please keep in mind that the outcome data may not be accurate and up to date as this involves a manual process.