Knife crime statistics (FOI)

Request

Regarding the increase in knife crime and a follow up to a recent request - the breakdown of ethnicity is too vague.

Previous for request from another member:

Knife crime (FOI)

I am writing to obtain a detailed breakdown of knife offences in Jersey.

When I write knife crime offences, I refer to offences in which a knife / sharp object is involved.

Jersey does not publicly release detail on this, but if possible I am looking for offences involving a knife:

i) homicide

ii) threat to kill

iii) assault with injury and assault with intent to cause serious harm

iv) robbery

v) rape and sexual assault

If this breakdown is not available, please supply data which you are able to supply which best captures this request – please do get in contact if this warrants further discussion.

Please supply data on:

A

Country of origin of person(s) where the use or possession of a knife or bladed instrument was reported and recorded as a crime from 2015 to October 2020.

B

Offences recorded by police from 2015 to October 2020 - where a knife or sharp object was reportedly used. Table by suspect, gender, age and country of origin.

C

Offences recorded by police from 2015 to October 2020 - where a knife or sharp object was reportedly used. Table by victim, gender, age and country of origin.

D

Please can you give a breakdown for the calendar years 2019 and 2020 to the end of October 2020 by individual community of knife crime offences, broken down by the number resulting in a charge or summons. Table by convicted persons gender, age and country of origin.

Response

A to D

The requestor notes above that this request has already been responded to in May 2019 but suggests the ethnicity aspect is too vague. The original question specifically asked for ethnicity to be shown as Black, White, Asian or mixed. If no group was represented in the response, then there was no information held around that group.

Most of the information in this request is a repeat of that made in the original request and therefore the information is available elsewhere, in the original response.

Knife crime (FOI)

The new request asks for country of birth information, in the main, this information is not held.

When an individual reports a crime on the telephone to police, their country of birth is not recorded. The country of birth of victims is not generally recorded unless it is held from a previous encounter with police. Those arrested for an offence will usually have their country of birth recorded.

To research all the years requested to produce the country of birth will take longer than permitted to complete Freedom of Information requests. As such, the Authority are entitled to refuse the whole request however, the States of Jersey Police have completed the figures for the year 2020 for questions A, B and D. The age of the offender has been redacted in question D as this may help identify the offender to a number of the population in Jersey.

Table to questions A and B (2000 to date) -  knife crime

Table to question D -  knife crime

Exemptions applied:

Article 23: Information accessible to applicant by other means:

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is reasonably available to the applicant, otherwise than under this law, whether or not free of charge.

(2) A scheduled public authority that refuses an application for the information on this ground must make reasonable efforts to inform the applicant where the applicant may obtain the information.

Article 16 A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.

Article 25 Personal information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018; and

(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.

(3) In determining for the purposes of this Article whether the lawfulness principle in Article 8(1)(a) of the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018 would be contravened by the disclosure of information, paragraph 5(1) of Schedule 2 to that Law (legitimate interests) is to be read as if sub-paragraph (b) (which disapplies the provision where the controller is a public authority) were omitted.