Knife crime and stop and search data 2015-2024

Response

Please see two spreadsheets attached.

The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.

Our records are kept in line with the Police Information and Records Management Code of Practice, the APP on Review Retention and disposal and the NPCC Retention schedule. Details can be found here.

For knife crime, we have provided information from our crime recording database Niche. Data is held in a searchable form since 2015 when our crime recording system was introduced. Information provided as follows:

• Crime data filtered to where a there is a Home Office (HO) knife flag for 2015-2023 annual totals. 2015 is not a full year for home office knife flagging so the data for that year is low for the flagged offence data.
• Crime of ‘Offence of Possession of Weapons’ filtered to Possession of Blade from 2008-19 December 2024 annual totals. Data from 2008-2015 is from Guardian, our crime recording system before Niche. This data may not be accurate given retention policies and changes in how data was recorded.

For stop and search, we have provided information from 01 January 2017 which is the earliest date we hold it in our Qlik App until 5^th December 2024. The data is in monthly totals for the Bristol area. This includes:

• Stop and search
• Stop and search filtered for reason offensive weapon

To provide information further back than we have for each of the areas requested would attract a refusal under Section 12 of the act. This is because it is not held in an easily retrievable form as explained above and would exceed the appropriate cost limit.

Section 12 of the Act makes provision for public authorities to refuse requests for information where the cost of dealing with them would exceed the appropriate cost limit, which for police authorities is set at £450 or 18 staff hours. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 2.5 working days in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting it.

To assist further, some information from previously published FOI requests on Stop and Search is available here. Please also see previously published FOI requests for a general idea on what data we hold if you wish to request more specific information. You may also wish to specify the offences you are interested in by Home Office offence code.  You may wish to request data from 2015 relating to outcomes where there is a home office knife flag, or request data relating to the offence outcomes for possession of a blade. All data provided will be subject to any exemptions that may apply.