To ask the Scottish Executive how many people were convicted for handling an offensive weapon with a bail aggravator in 2009, broken down by police force area.
Information on offence aggravations have been published and classified as data being developed alongside the 2009-10 Criminal Proceedings in Scotland statistical bulletin and therefore extreme caution needs to be applied to these figures.
They are initial results of a testing phase and are not fully developed. It is important that users clearly understand the status of these series and apply caution to the results, particularly when comparing results across time or geographically.
We are planning work to increase our understanding of offence aggravations data and to assess and attempt to improve the consistency of recording of the data. It is anticipated that this work will be completed during 2011. An update and full details of any changes will be provided with publication of the 2010-11 Criminal Proceedings Bulletin. More details are available here:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Crime-Justice/Datasets/CrimProcDatDev.
The crime of handling an offensive weapon includes the offences of possession of an offensive weapon; restriction of offensive weapons, and having in a public place an article with a blade or point. An ˜offensive weapon'' means any article made or adapted for use for causing injury to the person, or intended by the person having it with him for such use by him or by some other person, and the statistics therefore include such weapons as knives, pieces of wood, baseball bats, belts and bottles.
The available information is given in the following table.
Persons Convicted of Handling an Offensive Weapon Offences1 with a Bail Aggravator, by Police Force Area
| Police Force | 2009-10 |
| Central | 27 |
| Dumfries and Galloway | 6 |
| Fife | 28 |
| Grampian | 25 |
| Lothian and Borders | 55 |
| Northern | 5 |
| Strathclyde | 339 |
| Tayside | 21 |
| Scotland | 506 |
Note: 1. Where main offence.