One in four children victims of crime — study
But majority of them are low-level offences
London: Nearly one in four children in England and Wales aged 10 to 15 were the victims of crime last year, according to a Home Office survey of the experiences of under 16s.
But the first results from the experimental children's British Crime Survey (BCS) published yesterday reveal that the majority of the 2.1 million incidents of theft and violence against young teenagers were no more than playground pushing and shoving or family spats.
The 2.1 million figure covers all incidents that would be technically classified as a crime in law, whether they happened inside or outside the school playground. When the children were asked whether they considered the incident to be a crime the figure fell to 404,000.
The Home Office minister Nick Herbert said the findings reinforced his belief that existing crime measures had offered only a partial or confusing picture about the level of offending.
The children's BCS appears to undermine the idea of an explosion in juvenile crime not being picked up by existing crime measures.
The survey shows that children face higher levels of violent crime than adults but confirms that most of it is low-level offending that does not involve injury and that the more serious incidents are already being reported to the police.
The attempt to fill the gap in British crime statistics by developing a children's BCS has taken nearly two years and the first survey is based on 3,700 interviews with children last year in front of their parents.
They were asked about their experience as victims of violence and theft but the questions did not cover issues such as parental abuse, sexual offences and drugs.
Home Office statisticians said they were consulting over the final format of the children's BCS and offered four different possible measures to be used.
The first covered incidents that were legally a crime; the second was a "norms-based" measure that excluded low-level incidents such as pushing or shoving; a third included all incidents that were a crime in law but excluded those in schools; and a fourth was of those that children said they regarded as a crime. The third measure is closest to the reality of a juvenile crime.
