Youth Crime briefing - Nacro

YOUTH CRIME BRIEFING MARCH 2006Youth Crime briefingSome facts about children andyoung people who offend – 2004Contents Introduction Page 1 The extent of youthcrime Page 1 The nature of youthoffending Page 3 The characteristics ofchildren and youngpeople whooffend Page 3 Pre-courtdiversion Page 5 Court disposals Page 7 Conclusion Page 7A larger print version ofthis briefing paper isavailable on request.Contact us on020 7840 6433.Nacro produces training,research, consultancy,advice, evaluations andinformation touching awide range of youthjustice issues. For furtherinformation contact us on020 7840 6439.Nacro Youth Crime169 Clapham RoadLondon SW9 0PUtel: 020 7582 6500fax: 020 7840 6420email: infoyc@nacro.org.ukwww.nacro.org.ukIntroductionThis factsheet aims to present anoverview of what is known aboutyoung people who offend, based onthe latest available data, and ananalysis of some of the main trendswithin the youth justice system in theyears leading up to the reformsassociated with the Crime andDisorder Act 1998 and the periodsince implementation of thosereforms.The information provided is basedlargely on Criminal Statistics 1 andSentencing Statistics 2 , the latestvolumes of which give figures for2004. Where no detailed reference isgiven, figures are taken from thesetwo publications. Frequent use is alsomade of data drawn from a range ofother sources where these can helpto provide a broader context withinwhich to locate the figures forrecorded offending. The paperfocuses on children aged 10 – 17years; those above the age ofcriminal responsibility who if theyoffend are processed by the youthjustice system. For most purposes,developments within youth justiceare traced from 1992 onwards, thefirst year that 17-year-olds wereincluded within the jurisdiction ofthe youth court. 3 Any potentialimpact of the youth justice reformssuggested by the data is alsohighlighted. While many of theprovisions associated with thosereforms were contained within theCrime and Disorder Act 1998, themajority were not implemented on anationwide basis until April 2000. Atthe same time, it seems probable thatresponses to young people whooffend ‘anticipated’ the legislativechanges, at least in some respects,prior to implementation.The extent of youth crimeSelf reported offendingYouth crime and disorder continue toprovoke widespread public concern.For instance, during 2004/2005almost one in three adults (31%)reported that teenagers hangingaround on street corners was a very,or fairly, big problem in theirlocality, a significantly higher figurethan the 27% recorded for theprevious year. 4 At the same time,public rating of the ability of thecriminal justice system to dealeffectively with young peopleaccused of offending, while stillrelatively low, appears to be rising. Inthe same year, 27% of thoseinterviewed indicated that they werefairly, or very, confident in thisaspect of the system’s performance,compared with 24% twelve monthsearlier and 21% during 2002/2003. 5Self report surveys confirm that aminority of young people do behave,on occasion, in ways which might beconsidered anti-social. Thus during2004, a quarter of 10 – 25 year oldssurveyed admitted that they hadengaged in at least one of four typesof such behaviour in the past year.The most common form of anti-socialbehaviour was being noisy or rude ina public place (16%), followed bybehaving in a way that led to aneighbour complaining (12%).Involvement in graffiti or religiouslyor racially motivated abuse wassignificantly rarer at 3% and 2%respectively. 6 At the time, it isimportant to note that three quartersof young people had not engaged inany form of anti-social behaviourwithin the relevant period. Moreover,of those who admitted suchbehaviour, 72% had been involved injust one sort and the large majorityhad done so just once or twice.Nacro is a registered charity.Registration no. 226171Registered office169 Clapham Road London SW9 0PUpage

Some facts about children and young people who offend – 2004Indeed, self reported offending appears to be morecommon than anti-social behaviour – perhaps becauseof the wider range of behaviours considered in thesurvey. So 35% of boys and 22% of girls, aged 10 – 17years, admitted having committed at least one of 20core offences during the past year. Almost one in fivemales indicated that they had committed one of sixmore serious offences and 11% admitted offending onat least six occasions during that same twelve monthperiod. 7But it is important to place this information incontext. In the first place, most of the incidentsrecorded are of a relatively minor nature. Thus whileassault was the most frequently cited offence, half ofthese involved no injury to the victim. Moreover,given that one in four boys and one in five girls aged12 – 13 years admitted a violent offence, it seemslikely that a considerable proportion involvedplayground fights or similar disputes among childrenof the same age. Indeed, more than half of assaultsresulting in injury were described as ‘grabbing,pushing or pulling’. By contrast, robbery was veryrare: only 1% of those surveyed reported that they hadcommitted an offence of that nature in the past year. 8Second, it is clear that such findings are not new. TheYouth Lifestyles Survey, for instance, conducted priorto the implementation of the youth justice reforms,reported that 33% of males aged 15 – 17 years admittedat least one offence in the previous 12 months. 9 Morethan 20 years earlier, Belson’s 1977 study produced arate of lifetime theft from shops of 70%. 10 Moreover,such levels of youth offending are not unique toEngland and Wales. While there are inevitablydifficulties of comparison, recent research hassuggested that self reported delinquency among 14 –21 year olds in England and Wales is no higher thanthat in either the Netherlands or Spain, the other twojurisdictions included in the study. Property crime,violence, vandalism and traffic offences were eachfound to be lower in England and Wales, although theresearchers suggest that the finding for the formercategory might be explained by the differences in thequestionnaires administered. Cannabis use was similaracross each of the three countries studied, but use of‘hard drugs’ was highest in England and Wales. 11Detected crimeOnly a small proportion of those children who admitoffending come into contact with the youth justicesystem as a consequence. So while 28% of 10 – 17 yearolds had committed an offence within the past year,just 6% of these had been arrested and only 2% hadbeen taken to court. 12 In part, this wide differential canbe explained in terms of continuing low detectionrates, which during 2004/ 2005 stood at 26%, a modestincrease of 3% over the previous year. 13 (Offences ofviolence, it should be noted, have much higher thanaverage clear up rates since the victim is morefrequently able to identify his or her assailant.) Itseems probable too that many of the offences admittedby children in the survey were consideredinsufficiently serious to be reported to the police.In terms of detected crime, it is true that youngpeople are more likely than adults to offend. During2004, the peak age of offending was 17 years for boysand 15 years for girls. Nonetheless, because 10 – 17year olds make up a relatively small proportion of thetotal population, offences committed by adultsaccount the large majority. During 2004, children andyoung people aged 17 years or under accounted forjust 11% of all detected crime, as indicated in thefollowing chart. 14Trends in youth crimeFinally, it is also important to consider the relativelyhigh levels of self reported offending in the context ofwhat appears to have been a significant fall in youthcrime over the past 12 years. Sixty one per cent of thepublic believes that crime in England and Wales isrising, but this perception is not borne out by officialdata. 15 While the number of young people who werereprimanded, warned or convicted for an indictableoffence during 2004 shows a 7.8% increase over theprevious year, the longer term trend is one ofdeclining youth offending. The latest risenotwithstanding, the number of indictable offencescommitted by young people under 18 has fallen from143,600 in 1992 to 112,900 – as indicated in thefollowing chart – a drop of 21%.Moreover, the fall in youth crime appears equally assignificant when demographic change is taken intoaccount. It cannot, in other words, be explained byreductions in the youth population. Offending byyoung people has also declined – indeed the fallappears sharper – when expressed as a proportion ofthe youth population. For instance, the number of 15 –17 year old males, cautioned, reprimanded or warnedfor an indictable offence, was 7,065 for every 100,000of the population in that age group in 1992, comparedwith 5,479 in 2004.ThousandsDetected offending by ageChildren and young people cautioned, reprimanded, warnedor sentenced for indictable offences 1992 – 2004YearsAs noted earlier, recorded crime figures do not give afull account of offending, in part because of therelatively low rate of detection. This raises thepossibility that falls in detected youth offending dopage

YOUTH CRIME BRIEFINGnot necessarily represent the underlying trends inyouth crime. Clear up rates, for instance, declinedduring the early part of the 1990s and it might beargued therefore that this accounted for some of therecorded fall in offending by children and youngpeople during that period. However, from 1995onwards, there was an upturn in rates of detection,which has more recently remained relatively stable. 16From the mid 1990s, therefore, shifts in detectioncould not have contributed to the continueddownward trend in recorded youth crime.In any event, it seems unlikely that a ‘gap’, betweenoffences committed and those brought to justice,could account for the pattern of youth crime capturedby official statistics, even during the earlier period.Other sources of information appear to paint a picturewhich is consistent with a real decline in youthoffending since at least 1992. The number of crimesrecorded by the police fell during the first part of the1990s, and the Home Office suggests that much of thesubsequent increase is attributable to changes in thecounting rules introduced in 1999, and thesubsequent adoption by the police of the NationalCrime Recording Standard, which encourages formalrecording of a greater proportion of incidentsreported by the public. 17The annual British Crime Survey (BCS) measurestrends in self reported victimisations, and is generallyconsidered to provide a more accurate indication oflevels of crime, since it is not susceptible, in the sameway as recorded crime, to changes in police practiceor recording. During 2004/ 2005, the surveyregistered a fall of 7% in overall crime over theprevious year, continuing a downward trend whichbegan in 1995. The risk of victimisation hasaccordingly fallen by 40% in the past ten years and iscurrently at the lowest level recorded since the surveywas first conducted in 1981. 18Thus other measures of trends in offending –although they provide a picture of overall crimerather than that which can be attributed to youngpeople alone – are consistent with the data forrecorded youth crime. They might therefore bethought to add weight to the suggestion that thedecline recorded in Criminal Statistics represents agenuine fall.In this light, it is also worth considering the possibilitythat the rise in detected youth offending over the pastyear might be influenced by recent changes in practice.The Government has set a target for all agenciesworking within the criminal justice system to narrowthe ‘justice gap’ between offences recorded and thosebrought to justice by increasing the number that resultin a recognised ‘sanction detection’, 19 to 1.25 million by2007/2008, as compared with 1.025 million offences inthe year ending March 2002. 20 One possibleconsequence of this target is that offences whichwould previously have been dealt with informally (andgo unrecorded) might attract a formal response,reflected in the recorded figures for youth crime.and other offences of violence. Such offendingfrequently has serious consequences for the victimand the concentration on incidents of this nature isunderstandable. It should be acknowledged too thatviolent offences and robbery have increased, in recentyears, as a proportion of all youth crime. Nonetheless,much of this apparent rise is due to a relative fall inthe incidence of less serious offences such as theftand handling stolen goods: the rise in absolutenumbers of violent incidents is accordingly muchsmaller than the percentage figures might suggest. Atthe same time, the focus on more serious offencestends to obscure the fact that the majority of youthcrime continues to be directed against propertydespite the relative fall in such offences. In 2004,theft, handling stolen goods, burglary, fraud orforgery and criminal damage, accounted for 63% ofindictable offences committed by young people.Indeed, theft and handling offences alone representmore than four out of every ten. Violence, robberyand sexual assault remain relatively rare.Violent offending against the person, for instance,constitutes less than 17% of indictable offences leadingto reprimand, final warning or conviction, a rise from12% since 1993. A significant proportion of suchoffences are, moreover, relatively minor. In 2004, forinstance, 63% resulted in a reprimand or a warning,suggesting that they arose out of incidents of a lessserious nature. (This does not necessarily imply thatcases resulting in a conviction are always serious.Relatively minor offences of violence will lead toprosecution if the young person does not make a fulladmission at the police station, or if he or she haspreviously received a final warning or conviction.)Robbery is another offence which generates thehighest levels of public concern. The figures for 2004show a slight increase in the number of robberiesafter a fall over the previous two years. Overall, suchoffences continue to be relatively rare, accounting for2.8% of indictable matters.Sexual offences too make up a very small proportion,less than 1%, of youth crime. Furthermore, offences ofa sexual nature have fallen: both in terms of absolutenumbers and as a proportion of all indictable offencessince the early 1990s. During 2004, half of sexualoffences committed by children under the age of 18years, resulted in a pre-court disposal rather thanprosecution.The chart below provides a comparative breakdown ofindictable offences resulting in caution, reprimand,Indictable offences committed by children and young peopleaged 10 – 17 years for selected yearsThousandsThe nature of youth offendingMuch of the public concern in relation to youngpeople’s behaviour tends to focus on ‘street crime’page

Some facts about children and young people who offend – 2004warning or conviction by offence type, for the years1993, 2003 and 2004. Other than those categoriesalready discussed, the major point of significance is alarge increase in drugs offences since the early 1990s,most of which involve possession of cannabis, now aClass C drug. Since the figures exclude summaryoffences, the picture displayed somewhat overstatesthe general gravity of youth offending. (Weresummary offences included, for instance, robberywould constitute less than 2% of recorded crime.)But if a focus on serious youth offending tends toobscure the general nature of the majority of crimecommitted by young people, it also detracts attentionfrom the fact that the large preponderance of seriousoffences are committed by adults. During 2004,persons over the age of 18 years were responsible formore than three and a half times as many violentoffences and more than six times as many sexualoffences as children and young people. Robbery isfrequently portrayed as a ‘young person’s offence’,but even here, adults accounted for 57% of the total.The characteristics of children andyoung people who offendRiskAn increasing number of research studies suggest thatit is possible to identify some of the factors whichtend to be associated with offending, particularly forthose young people whose offending is serious orpersistent. These ‘risk factors’ as they have come tobe known, are familiar to most of those workingwithin the youth justice system and include:• Inadequate or inconsistent parenting• Disaffection with school or low educationalachievement• Substance or alcohol misuse• Mental ill health. 21Gang membership too is correlated with an increasedrisk of offending and the strength of the relationshipappears to increase with age up to the late teens,before declining again. In one study for instance, thevolume of self reported delinquency among gangmembers aged 17 years was 6.42 times as high asamong those who did not consider themselves tohang around in a gang. Moreover, changes in levels ofdelinquency among individual young people werealso closely linked to whether or not they were in agang at that particular point in time. 22Recent research also suggests that experiences ofbereavement and loss, which it has long beenrecognised may be correlated with serious or gravecrimes, may, in addition, be more common amongyoung people whose offending is at a lower level ofseriousness than has previously been acknowledged. 23But the ‘risk factor paradigm’, as it has been termed,should not be thought of as providing astraightforward causal account of the origin of youthoffending, which allows prediction from anaccumulation of characteristics to later criminalbehaviour. Armstrong has recently pointed out, forinstance, that the majority of young people whooffend do not in fact belong to what might beconsidered the high risk group. Conversely, whilemany children in trouble have a disruptedbackground, the majority with such problems do notgo on to become offenders. 24 Inevitably the picture israther more complex than is sometimes suggested.For instance, while there is clear relationship betweensubstance misuse and crime, that relationshipoperates in a variety of ways, frequently mediated byother factors. According to the Offending, Crime andJustice Survey (OCJS), for instance, young people whoreported using any drug within the past year werealmost twice as likely to admit having committed anoffence as those who did not, while those who hadused Class A drugs were three times as likely to beclassified as ‘serious’ or ‘frequent offenders’. 25 At thesame time, as another study has shown, onset foroffending is 14.5 years compared with 16.2 years fordrugs generally and 19.9 years for hard drugs. Crimetends to precede drug use rather than vice versa. 26Moreover, substance misuse is heightened amongyoung people considered to be vulnerable (defined asever having been in care, ever having been homeless,truanting, excluded from school or a serious orfrequent offender), suggesting that the relationshipbetween drugs and offending is not a linear one.VictimisationThe OCJS illuminates a further characteristic typicalof young people in trouble with the law. Teenagershave a significantly higher risk of victimisation thanadults 27 but the chances of being a victim are notevenly distributed within the younger age group.Thus while just over a third of 10 – 15 year olds hadbeen a victim of a personal crime in the past year,those whose carers were perceived to have poorparenting skills, those who had been excluded fromschool, and those who had friends or siblings whowere in trouble with the police, had significantlyhigher rates of victimisation. 28 It appears then that therisk factors for victimisation closely mirror those foroffending. The striking overlap is easily explainedsince, for that age group, 52% of those who admittedoffending had also been victims, compared with lessthan a quarter of non-offenders. These findingsreflect earlier research that suggests a complexinteraction between offending and victimisation so faras children and young people are concerned.‘Victimisation predicts delinquency three years later;and also delinquency predicts victimisation three yearslater. The more often victimisation is repeated, themore strongly it predicts delinquency’. 29There are, at the same time, geographic variations interms of risk. The chances of being a victim ofpersonal theft, for instance, among thosecommunities classified as ‘hard pressed’ are 50%higher than in areas occupied by ‘wealthy achievers’. 30The risk of being burgled is 237% greater. Youngpeople who come from the most disadvantagedneighbourhoods are thus most at risk of victimisationand of engaging in offending behaviour.Rather than anticipating a causal relationship betweenrisk factors and delinquency, it is accordingly morehelpful to understand the correlations as reflectingthe substantial commonality of the circumstances thatgive rise to both. This helps to explain why levels ofpage

Some facts about children and young people who offend – 2004more likely to be remanded in secure conditions. Anydiscrimination at those earlier points will necessarilybe reflected in an over-representation at later stages.Recent research has also suggested that black youngpeople’s experiences of crime and the criminal justicesystem can lead them to have little confidence in thepolice. The report author argues that black youngpeople perceive their treatment by the police to beinformed by racist stereotyping. As a consequencethey display a lack of trust that any offences whichthey reported would be investigated appropriately. 38At the same time, black people and those fromminority ethnic groups bear higher risks ofvictimisation. In 2002/03, those from ethnic minoritybackgrounds were more likely to be victims of crimethan the white majority population. Much, but by nomeans all, of this difference is explained by theyounger demographic profile of the black andminority population since those aged 16 – 24 are atgreatest risk. 39be accounted for in a similar manner. Girls, it hasbeen argued, have traditionally benefited from a more‘welfarist’ approach to their offending, resulting in agreater use of informal responses than generallyafforded to boys. On this account, a shift towards a‘less gendered’ treatment led, up until recently, to thesharper falls in pre-court diversion for girls, notedabove, although the rate of diversion remainssignificantly higher than for boys. 42 One might expecttherefore that the target to increase the number ofoffences brought to justice would impactdifferentially on females, leading to an expansion inthe numbers brought within the parameters of theyouth justice system, particularly at the pre-courtstage. The major part of the rise in recorded girls’offending during 2003 – 2004 does indeed relate tothose who received a reprimand or final warning.Rate of Diversion 1992 – 20004Pre-court diversionFollowing an arrest, if the police consider that there issufficient evidence to proceed with the case, theoptions available to them are to reprimand, warn orcharge the young person. The system of reprimandsand final warnings, introduced by the Crime andDisorder Act 1998, replaced police cautioning foryoung people from June 2000. 40 The new scheme wasintended to reduce inconsistent and multiplecautioning by restricting the number of pre-courtdisposals that any individual young person couldreceive to one reprimand and (in most cases) one finalwarning.Given this context, the reform of the pre-court systemmight have been expected to produce a reduction inthe proportion of cases diverted from court. Thepicture is however more complicated since the rate ofdiversion had begun to decline much earlier. 41 Theintroduction of the final warning scheme did notaccordingly mark a new departure but served ratherto reinforce a trend which was dominant throughoutthe 1990s during which there were consistentreductions in the cautioning rate from 73% in 1992 to56% in 2000. The first two years following theintroduction of the final warning schemeunsurprisingly saw further reductions in diversion.There were, however, rises in both 2003 and 2004 asindicated in the chart below.One possible explanation for the recent rise wouldhighlight the effect of attempts to ‘narrow the justicegap’. If, as suggested earlier in the briefing, theimpact of that target has been to reduce further theuse of informal responses to minor offending, onewould expect any consequent increase in recordedyouth crime to be weighted towards the front end ofthe system, since those children with a previousoffending history would in all likelihood havepreviously received a formal disposal in any event.The picture of a combination of an increase in thediversion and an expansion in recorded youth crimeis thus consistent with such an explanation. Therecent increase in the number of girls entering theyouth justice system over the same period might alsoPercentYearsA further criticism levelled at police cautioning wasthat it was inconsistently applied. The final warningscheme was intended to address this issue byregulating the number of pre-court disposals and bypromoting police decision-making informed by asystem of nationally endorsed gravity factors. 43 Afterfour years of operation, however, it seems clear thatthe reformed scheme has effected little change in thelevel of variation in practice between police serviceareas. Thus in 1999, the last year before theimplementation of the new system, the rate ofcautioning for 15 – 17 year old males, for indictableoffences, varied from 63% in both Gloucestershire andSurrey to 22% in Durham. During 2004, the rate ofdiversion ranged from 71% in Surrey to 34% inDurham and Greater Manchester. 44 The persistence ofsuch inconsistencies might be explained, in part, bythe finding that in some areas, young people whoplead guilty to relatively minor offences areprosecuted even where they have not previouslyreceived a reprimand or final warning. 45Diversion from prosecution has consistently provedto be a relatively effective mechanism for dealing withyouth offending. In 1994, for instance, 81% ofchildren and young people who were cautioned didnot reoffend within two years. During 2003, thereconviction rate for reprimands and final warnings,within a one year period, was 19.7%. 46 The AuditCommission, in its 2004 review of youth justice, hassuggested that there might be scope for dealing withlarger numbers of young people whose offending isrelatively minor outside of the court arena. 47page

YOUTH CRIME BRIEFINGNorthamptonshire already operates a modifiedversion of the final warning scheme, with anadditional tier of ‘informal action’ prior to areprimand; an approach underpinned by researchwhich has concluded that the‘model is not only effective – in terms of both reducingoffending and increasing diversion – it is also costeffective and appears to have a positive impact onlocal sentencing’. 48Court disposalsThe referral order was rolled out nationally in April2002 and, given its near mandatory nature forchildren and young people appearing in court for thefirst time who plead guilty, has rapidly become themost frequently used court sentence. During 2004,the referral order accounted for more than one in four(27.2%) of all court penalties. 49 It has primarilydisplaced the reparation order and action plan order,both of which had initially proved popular with thecourts from their introduction in 2000. As aconsequence, during 2004, the use of the former was61% lower than three years earlier, while the numberof action plan orders had fallen by 48%. The referralorder has also contributed to the continued decline ofthe conditional discharge, which accounted for 33% ofall disposals in 1993, 23.6% in 1999 and 9.6% in 2004.The supervision order remains the second mostpopular youth disposal, making up 10.5% ofsentences during 2004.At the top end of the sentencing scale, the use ofcustody for children has been a major cause ofconcern since the early 1990s. Figures for 2003,however, showed a significant and welcome fall incustodial disposals of 16% over the previous year.The latest data suggest that this may have been asignificant fluctuation rather than a departure fromthe earlier trend, with custody rising again by some2% during 2004, as shown in the chart below. Theperiod of custodial escalation has also seen anincrease in the length of detention imposed. In 1994,the average custodial sentence made in the youthcourt for offences of robbery and theft or handlingstolen goods was 4 and 3.8 months respectively. Theequivalent figures for 2004 were 9.5 and 6.2 months.At the same time, sentences of long term detentionimposed in the crown court, under sections 90-91 ofthe PCC(S)A, increased by 438% between 1992 and2004, from 104 to 560.Young people sentenced to Custody 1992 – 20004One of the factors that has contributed to sustainingthe custodial population at such high levels, has beenan increase in the use of breach proceedings. Whileearlier figures are not available, the proportion ofsupervision orders returned to court for noncompliancerose three fold, between 2000 and 2004,from 7% to 21%. As a consequence the number ofchildren who received a detention and training orderfor breach of that order also increased from 159 to517, as indicated in the chart below. In the latter year,breach of supervision accounted for more than 8% ofall custodial disposals. 50Reoffending following a custodial sentence remainsconsistently high, with 82% of boys discharged from ayoung offender institution in 2001 being reconvictedwithin two years of release. For those with 3-6previous convictions, the rate of reconviction rose to92% and to 96% for those with 7 – 10 antecedentconvictions. Of those who reoffended, 56% werereturned to custody within that 24 month period. 51Young people sentenced to Custody for breach of asupervision order 2000 – 20004YearConclusionThe latest volumes of official statistics on the criminaljustice system show a continuation of some earliertrends within youth justice, but also display a numberof seeming discontinuities. The latter include a rise inoverall detected youth crime, combined with a relativeincrease in the number of girls processed forindictable offences. At the same time, there has beenan apparent reversal in what had been a long termtrend towards reduced diversion. While these shiftsmight be a consequence of changes in the underlyingpattern of youth offending, they might also be a byproductof efforts to increase the number of offencesbrought to justice, reducing the use of any informalresponses to minor transgressions committed byyoung people with a limited offending history ingeneral, and girls in particular.ThousandsYearpage