Survey reveals depth of child crime

FT

More than twice as many children fell victim to crimes last year than adults, according to the first comprehensive survey of 10 to 15 year olds about their experience of violence and theft.

The provisional findings from the British Crime Survey, viewed by many statisticians as the most reliable indicator of crime trends, were seized on by the coalition government as lending credence to long-standing Conservative claims that violent offences in particular have been under-recorded.

Nick Herbert, the policing and criminal justice minister, said the new figures backed the Tory belief that previous measures – which excluded children – only offered “a partial or confused picture”. “However you look at these statistics, they reveal... that crime affecting young people is a serious problem,” he said.

The headline figures showed that as many as one in four children were a victim of theft or violence last year on a strict legal basis. However, Home Office statisticians pointed out that this included incidents such as children having their dinner money taken, pushing and shoving in the street and siblings breaking each others toys.

When stripping out such incidents – where the value of items stolen were low or the hurt caused was minor – to achieve a “normalised” figure, it was estimated that 14 per cent of children fell prey to theft and violence. Over the same period, only 6 per cent of adults were victims of similar personal crimes.

John Flatley, the report’s editor, said the study, based on interviews with 3,700 children confirmed what statisticians had suspected about youth crime. “We expected that children would have higher levels of victimisation than adults and that most of it would be dominated by low level violence and that the serious stuff is relatively rare.”

The study, which could be carried out every year, offers the first snapshot of British children’s experience of crime, though it excludes important areas such as domestic and sexual abuse, cyber bullying and drug use.

Successive home secretaries have been under pressure to make statistics available on child crime after a string of stabbings and shootings involving youth gangs, particularly in London.

The normalised figures showed 9.5 per cent of 10 to 15 year olds were victims of violence last year, though only 2.3 per cent were wounded. This compares to just 3 per cent of adults who suffered violent attacks last year, and just 1 per cent who were wounded.

The study also found, however, that many children did not preceive themselves as being victims of crime, even where the officials conducting the survey determined that offences had taken place. Only 6 per cent overall thought they had been the victim of a police recordable crime, with just 3 per cent thinking they had been victims of violence and 1 per cent wounding.