Chart: Sentences for knife carrying are increasing, but not for teens
Sentences for carrying a bladed or pointed article have become more severe for adults over the past decade, with 41% of men now going to prison on conviction. For younger offenders, the picture is different: half of girls and a third of boys caught with a knife receive no penalty – a proportion that is largely unchanged since 2008 – while fewer than one in ten receive a custodial sentence.
larger image | annotated R code to produce this chart
Data source: Ministry of Justice, 2019