FOI 9125-25 Crossbows

Request:

Please provide information for the following for the years: 2022, 2023 and 2024.

1. How many incidents did you attend which involved a person possessing a crossbow?

2. How many people under the age of 18 were found to be in possession of a crossbow?

3. Of the overall number of incidents, how many involved a fatality?

4. How many crossbows did you seize per year?

Police Response:

When reviewing this response, please be aware that Northamptonshire Police records ‘Incidents’ from requests from members of the public requiring police assistance. These requests for assistance may be made via 101/999 or online submissions via the Northamptonshire Police website. Not all incident reports generate a crime report, and not all crime reports come from an incident report.

1) How many incidents did you attend which involved a person possessing a crossbow?
None

2) How many people under the age of 18 were found to be in possession of a crossbow?
2022 – 0
2023 – 0
2024 – 1

3) Of the overall number of incidents, how many involved a fatality?
None

4) How many crossbows did you seize per year?
2022 – 8
2023 – 6
2024 - 24

The data was produced by searching for crimes and incidents for the calendar years 2022 to 2024, where one of the following keywords appears within the Crime MO Free Text field or Incident Description: 'crossbow', 'cross-bow' or 'cross bow'; or where 'Crossbow/arrow' has been inputted into the MO Weapons Used field.

As with any keyword search, the search will only return exact matches within the Incident Description or Crime MO. This does not account for differences in terminology and/or spelling used. Keyword searches are problematic and in no way provide accurate results or figures. If the selected key words have not been mentioned the data will not be returned.

Please note that this data should be interpreted with caution. Comparing numbers of incidents/crimes can be misleading and does not necessarily indicate the likelihood of someone being a victim of crime. In addition, the number of incidents/crimes recorded in an area over a period of time can be influenced by a number of factors. Consequently, statistics on incidents/crimes for one period may not necessarily be a good indicator of future incidents in that area.

The numerical data presented in this response is an un-audited snapshot of unpublished data sourced from "live" systems and is subject to the interpretation of the original request by the individual extracting the data.

The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when the data is used.

If you decide to write an article or use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.