Home Office response to findings from the British crime survey

Responding to the publication ‘Experimental statistics on victimisation of children aged 10 to 15: Findings from the British Crime Survey (BCS)', 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."

Posted Thursday June 17^th 2010
By Home Office