Region sees rise in knife convictions

THE West Midlands has one of the highest rates in England of people carrying knives in public.

People were either convicted or cautioned for carrying knives 1,133 times in the region between July 2015 and June 2016.

It was an 18 per cent increase on the total of 957 in the same period the year before.

Last year’s figure worked out at three people sentenced or cautioned for carrying knives every day in the capital.

It was the first time it had hit 1,000 cautions or convictions a year in the West Midlands since 2011/12.

It meant that the region had the fourth highest knife possession rate in England and Wales last year with 46 cautions or convictions per 100,000.

The only three forces to have a higher rate were the Metropolitan Police in London, Cleveland in Teesside and Northumbria.

London overtook Cleveland as the knife possession capital of England and Wales after the Teesside force had had the highest rate since the Home Office figures began in 2008/09.

The Home Office figures showed that the most likely outcome for someone caught with a knife was prison.

Even so, this only happened in fewer than a third of cases, 32 per cent in all.

One in eight offenders – some 13 per cent in total – were let off with a caution.

Other possibilities were an absolute or conditional discharge, fine, community sentence or a suspended sentence.