Weapons confiscated in schools (FOI)

Request

A

Knives or weapons (please state) confiscated from under 18s in Jersey Schools / colleges since 2014 (year by year)

B

Action taken against pupils / students for possessing knives or other weapons ins school within above time frame

C

Knives or weapons (please state) confiscated from under 18s anywhere in Jersey since 2014 (year by year)

D

Action taken against under 18s for possession weapons anywhere in the Island within above time frame

E

Number of times States Police Officers called to schools in relation to students possessing knives or weapons during the above time frame

Response

A and  B

The table below outlines the confiscation of knives and weapons in schools and colleges.

The Department have determined that due to the small number identified, revealing the actual figure when there is less than five along with the action taken would likely breach the privacy of the individuals, and therefore, Article 25 (Personal Information) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied. The data provided in this response relates to Government of Jersey maintained and fee-paying maintained schools and colleges.

The action taken following confiscation includes informing the Police, suspension from school, meeting with student and parent, student supervision and wellbeing support.

C and E

This information is not held in an easily searchable format. In order to answer these questions, approximately 17,000 lines of text would have to be manually read. Estimating a reading rate of 10 lines per minute, this would equate to 28 hours meaning that the cost of complying with this request would exceed the time restrictions of the Freedom of Information Regulations.

D

In 2017, one young person was charged with possession of an offensive weapon.

Article applied

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.