Youth Crime briefing - Nacro

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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
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Youth Crime briefing - Nacro

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