The court was asked whether a screwdriver fell within the prohibition of section 139(2). It was apparently an ordinary screwdriver with no sharp point, but it had what the trial judge had described as ‘blades positioned on each side of the driving head’.
Held: Buxton LJ: ‘We are, however, quite unable to agree with the conclusion to which he came. Firstly, we take up the argument advanced by Miss Deacon which also, so far as we can see, lies behind the judge’s ruling. It is too simple to say that the mischief of this section is to deter the carrying of items that could cause injury. Preventing or deterring further offences in which injuries are caused is, we entirely accept, no doubt the long-term and perfectly understandable objective of Parliament in passing sections such as section 139. Such an objective was also behind the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 which, however, limited itself to objects made or intended for the purpose of causing injury. The contention here goes much wider: that any object that could be so used potentially falls within the section.
The objections to that are twofold. Firstly, it gives the section an extremely wide ambit. As soon as an object falls within this section and a citizen is found with it in his possession in public, he has to prove that he has a good excuse for having it. That is a very significant limitation on the citizen’s freedom. It should not be assumed that it has been achieved except by the use of clear words.
Second, the degree to which Parliament thought it proper to interfere with the citizen’s freedom in that way is demonstrated by the limitation in the section to articles, in section 139(2), which have a blade or are sharply pointed, except folding pocketknives. The common sense assumption that lies behind that section is that Parliament sought to prevent or deter the carrying of what might be broadly called sharp instruments in public, not any article that has a blade — even if a screwdriver can be so described — but an article with a blade that falls within the same broad category as a knife or a sharply pointed instrument. That follows not only as a matter of common sense, but by looking at the specific items that are mentioned in the section, that is to say sharply pointed instruments or folding pocketknives, and inferring from that what the nature of the bladed article is to which Parliament was referring.
It seems to us, in that comparison, that it would be quite unlikely, indeed in our view impossible, that Parliament intended an article such as a screwdriver, just because it has a blade, to fall into the same category as a sharply pointed item or a folding pocketknife.
Further, that that is the construction of the phrase ‘any article which has a blade’ is strongly reinforced by referring to section 139(3), which we have already read. The section applies to a folding pocketknife if the cutting edge of its blade exceeds three inches. That section, in its very language, seems to assume that references to blades entail references to a cutting edge. That is how the expression is used in section 139(3). It is also, as we have said, the way in which the other items in section 139(2) seem to be described.
In our judgement, the test cannot be, as the judge suggested, whether the article is capable of causing injury. If that were the test there would be no need and no justification to do what Parliament has specifically done, and limit the section to bladed items and sharp instruments. If the objective was to outlaw the carrying of all items capable of causing injury there would be no explanation at all for why there was a limitation to articles which happen to have something that could be described as a blade.’
Buxton LJ
[1998] Crim LR 564
Criminal Justice Act 1988 13991)
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Brooker v Director of Public Prosecutions Admn 12-Apr-2005
Appeal against conviction for having bladed article, being a blunt butter knife without a point.
Held: The appeal failed. The section made an unqualified reference to a ‘bladed article’. Davies did not establish that only sharp objects were . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Updated: 22 October 2021; Ref: scu.231496
