209 items were given to Dorset Police during the March 2019 knife amnesty, running for a week between the 11th-17th of March.
All items were surrendered anonymously, and are now to be destroyed by the police.
Jared Parkin, superintendent, has said:“People have taken the time and trouble to hand in potentially dangerous items which have now been destroyed and are out of circulation. As a preventive measure, coupled with increasingly stringent national legislation on the sale of knives, we feel this is proportionate and helpful in maintaining a much lower level of knife related incidents than in other areas of the country.
Among the items handed in were knives, ornamental swords, nunchakus, a hammer and an axe.
Martyn Underhill, Dorset Police and Crime Commissioner, said: “Knife crime is a scourge, and ruins lives. As well as education, early intervention in schools and of course the prosecution of offenders, knife amnesties are an essential tool in the ongoing campaign to remove knives from our streets, and I am glad so many people have handed in these items.”
Outside of the amnesty people are advised to to dispose of these items in household waste, packages securely to prevent injuries.
They can also be deposited into a metal recycling skip at local reclamation facilities.
The amnesty was part of an ongoing national knife crime reduction strategy.
In the year ending March 2018, there were between 23-35 recorded knife and sharp instrument offences per 100,000 people in the Dorset area.
There were around 40,100 offences in England and Wales as a whole.
The prime minister is currently holding a week long Serious Youth Violence Summit, to find solutions to the knife crime epidemic.
