Crime Committed By Under 10's - 453/21

Date Responded 05 May 2021

Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')

As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of access to information held at the time of a request, by a Public Authority (including the Police), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.

You asked:

1. Please tell me for each of the following financial years: a) 2016/17 b) 2017/18 c) 2018/19 d) 2019/20 e) 2020/21 how many crimes committed by children under 10 have been recorded by your police force.

2. For each case, please tell me a) the sex of the child b) the age of the child c) the offence committed d) how the offender was dealt with (I'm obviously aware that children under 10 are under the age of criminal responsibility).

In Response:

Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Corporate Development Department of Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held by Northumbria Police.

I am able to disclose the located information to you as follows.

Fiscal Year	Count
2016/17	5
2017/18	4
2018/19	-
2019/20	-
2020/21	-
2021/22	-
Total	9

Please note that the information supplied below has been presented in such a way as to avoid the application of relevant exemptions under the act:

Sex & Age	2016/17	2017/18	2018/19	2019/20	2020/21	2021/22	Total
Female		-	-	-	-	-
8	1	-	-	-	-	-	1
Male			-	-	-	-
8	2	2	-	-	-	-	4
9	2	2	-	-	-	-	4
Total	5	4	-	-	-	-	9

Offence	2016/17	2017/18	2018/19	2019/20	2020/21	2021/22	Total
Common assault and battery	2	2	-	-	-	-	4
Criminal damage residential (local sub-code re part 058/00)	1	1	-	-	-	-	2
Damage - Business and Community	-	1	-	-	-	-	1
Damage other	1	-	-	-	-	-	1
Stealing from shops and stalls (shoplifting)	1	-	-	-	-	-	1
Total	5	4	-	-	-	-	9

Outcome	2016/17	2017/18	2018/19	2019/20	2020/21	2021/22	Total
Community resolution	5	4	-	-	-	-	9
Total	5	4	-	-	-	-	9

Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.

The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.

If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.

Disclaimer

Due to the different methods of recording information across 43 forces, a specific response from one constabulary should not be seen as an indication of what information could be supplied (within cost) by another. Systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data. For this reason responses between forces may differ, and should not be used for comparative purposes.

The information we have supplied to you is likely to contain intellectual property rights of Northumbria Police. Your use of the information must be strictly in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) or such other applicable legislation. In particular, you must not re-use this information for any commercial purpose.