An experimental British Crime Survey (BCS) focusing on children’s experiences of crime shows a staggering number of criminal injuries being committed in Britain against children, with more than two million criminal incidents affecting youngsters last year.
The new Government criminal statistics survey asked UK youngsters questions about their experiences as victims of violence and theft for the year ending December 2009 although the questions did not cover issues such as parental abuse, domestic violence, sex offences or drugs.
In total 2.1 million children were affected by crime last year, amounting to one in four British children.
The 2.1 million crime figure covers all incidents that could be technically classified as crime in law, whether they happened inside or outside school. When the children were asked whether they thought the incident was a crime the numbers fell to 404,000.
Some of the less serious incidents are being shrugged off as little more than playground tussles, however the concerning statistics, the first of their kind looking at British children’s experiences of crime in such a detailed way show just how much of a concern things like assaults, criminal damage and muggings are to children.
As part of the development work to extend the British Crime Survey to children the programme of qualitative research was undertaken to explore children’s understanding and perceptions of crime.
A number of factors were identified as important in determining the perceived severity of an incident included the victim/perpetrator relationship; perceived intention on the part of the perpetrator; value of items stolen, damaged; and whether a weapon was used and ultimately what level of injury was inflicted on the child victim.
The figure of 2.1 million crime incidents suffered by 24 per cent of all children aged 10 to 15, based on the first measure of all incidents that are a crime in law, includes serious crime such as being stabbed.
About 83,000 incidents involved some kind of wounding that was serious enough to need medical attention, ranging from a stab wound to broken teeth. The BCS survey also confirms that boys are nearly twice as likely to be victims of serious personal criminal injury. Those living in the 20 per cent most deprived areas of Britain are most at risk of crime.
Responding to the publication, entitled Experimental Statistics on Victimisation of Children Aged 10 to 15: Findings from the British Crime Survey (BCS), the Minister for Policing and Criminal
Justice Nick Herbert said:
“These new figures reinforce our longstanding belief that to date, crime measures have offered either a partial or confused picture about the level of offending.
“However you look at these statistics, they reveal what people know only too well – that crime affecting young people is a serious problem which must be tackled.
“We need a common sense approach that recognises young people’s experiences so that we don’t criminalise children by failing to properly distinguish between playground spats and serious crime.
“The public must have full and trusted information if we are to restore confidence in the statistics and drive effective action to tackle crime.
“We are currently considering how crime statistics should be collected and published in future, and will work with the UK Statistics Authority to consider this carefully.”
As well as theft and wounding the risk of criminal injuries affecting children includes robbery, assaults with and without injury, aggressive behaviour, damage to property.
Of extra worry to parents are the comparisons with adult crime.
While the researchers say it is not possible to make direct comparisons with estimates from the main British Crime Survey, the proportion of adults who were victims of any personal crime was six per cent for the same interview period as opposed to the 24 per cent figure for children covered by the survey.
Full details of the experimental British Crime Survey for children can be found at the Home Office website.
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