Home Department written question – answered at on 19 April 2007.
Jeremy Browne
Opposition Whip (Commons), Shadow Minister (Home Affairs)
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many and what percentage of people were convicted of an offence of the (a) manufacture, (b) importation, (c) sale and (d) hire of (i) flick knives and (ii) gravity knives under section 1 of the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959 in each of the last five years, broken down by age group.
Tony McNulty
Minister of State, Home Office
Data from the court proceedings database held by the Office for Criminal Justice Reform on the number of persons proceeded against at magistrates courts and found guilty at all courts for offences in connection with dangerous weapons under the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959 Section 1 in England and Wales from 2001-05, by age group, are provided in the following table.
Information on the individual circumstances of offences is not held centrally and therefore information on the offensive weapons involved in these cases is not available.
| Number of persons proceeded against at magistrates' courts, found guilty at all courts and convictions as a proportion of prosecutions for 'offences in connection with dangerous weapons' under the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959, by age group , England and Wales—2001-05( 1, 2) | |||
| Year/Age group | Proceeded against | Found guilty | Convictions as a proportion of prosecutions (percentage) |
| 2001 | |||
| 10-17 | 2 | 1 | 50 |
| 18-20 | 1 | 1 | 100 |
| 21 and over | 8 | 3 | 38 |
| Total | 11 | 5 | 45 |
| 2002 | |||
| 10-17 | — | — | — |
| 18-20 | 1 | 2 | 200 |
| 21 and over | 4 | 2 | 50 |
| Total | 5 | 4 | 80 |
| 2003 | |||
| 10-17 | — | — | — |
| 18-20 | 1 | — | 0 |
| 21 and over | 7 | 4 | 57 |
| Total | 8 | 4 | 50 |
| 2004 | |||
| 10-17 | 1 | 1 | 100 |
| 18-20 | 15 | 9 | 60 |
| 21 and over | 10 | 10 | 63 |
| 2005 | |||
| 10-17 | — | — | — |
| 18-20 | 1 | 1 | 100 |
| 21 and over | 11 | 7 | 64 |
| Total | 12 | 8 | 67 |
| (1) These data are provided on the principal offence basis. (2) Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by police forces and courts. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used. Note: Prosecutions are counted by date of final outcome in the magistrates court. Guilty figures are counted by the date of sentence in both magistrates courts and Crown courts. Hence guilty figures can exceed prosecutions where they reflect cases of people being found guilty in the magistrates court and committed for sentence to the Crown court, the two events being counted in two different years. | |||
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