The Council has published an evaluation of the impact and implementation of the Bladed article and offensive weapons definitive guidelines, under its statutory duty to monitor the operation and effect of sentencing guidelines and to draw conclusions from this information.  These guidelines came into force on 1 June 2018.

• Evaluation of the impact and implementation of the Sentencing Council’s Bladed articles and offensive weapons guidelines (HTML)
• Evaluation of the impact and implementation of the Sentencing Council’s Bladed articles and offensive weapons guidelines (PDF)
• Evaluation summary (HTML)
• Evaluation summary (PDF)

We have also published data collected at magistrates’ courts before and after the definitive guidelines came into effect that were drawn on as part of the evaluation.