Arrests for Possession of a Bladed Article or Offensive Weapon

Request Number: FOI/15508

Category: Incident and Crime Statistics - Knife Crime

Subject: Arrests for Possession of a Bladed Article or Offensive Weapon

Request and Answer: 
Your request for information has now been considered. In respect of Section 1(1)(a) of the Act we can confirm that the Police Service of Northern Ireland does hold information to which your request relates. The decision has been taken to disclose the following.

Request 
For the purpose of this request, the time frames to be considered are (i.e. financial years):

April 2020 – April 2021

April 2021 – April 2022

April 2022 – April 2023

April 2023 – April 2024

April 2024 – April 2025

• Broken down by the above timeframes, how many people aged 65 and over have been arrested on possession of a bladed article or offensive weapon?
• Of those number, please can you detail how many of these arrests were of males and how many were females?

Answer
Please see table below, Number of persons age 65+ arrested and processed through custody for an offence relating to possession of an offensive weapon. The request has been answered by matching custody record offences with all offence codes classified as ‘Possession of Weapons’ in the Department of Justice Principal Offence table; the notes with the response clearly indicate “offensive weapon includes blade or point, firearms/ammunition, prohibited weapon or unspecified offensive weapon”.Where a person has been arrested on more than one occasion, they are counted only once in this table.