Posted on 12/11/2006 1:07:49 PM PST by kiriath_jearim
Eighteen children under the age of 13 were arrested for rape in London alone last year, shocking new figures have revealed.
They are among nearly 3,000 children detained in the capital for serious crimes, also including murder, drug trafficking and robbery.
The startling figures, revealed under the Freedom of Information Act, show that violent and sex offences have risen.
Shoplifting remains young children’s most common crime but there were also 592 arrests for violent offences, 338 for robbery, 184 for burglary and 65 for sex offences, not including the 18 for rape.
A further 73 children were arrested for possession of drugs, four for drug trafficking and 134 for stealing motor vehicles.
A 13-year-old from north London who stabbed to death a takeaway food worker became one of the youngest killers to be convicted in Britain.
Police are also worried about children being “groomed” as gun runners by adult gangsters who want to avoid being caught with weapons themselves.
Separate figures today revealed a “wasted” generation, with the number of young people doing nothing with their lives increasing by 15 per cent in the past decade.
There are now 1.24 million people aged between 15 and 24 who are neither in education, nor work or a training scheme.
The statistic is a major embarrassment for Labour, which has spent billions of pounds helping disadvantaged young people to stay on at school, train and get a job.
The figures, obtained by the Evening Standard, show that in total the number of crimes thought to have been committed by under-13s was down by seven per cent.
The boroughs with the largest number of crimes committed by children were Bromley and Hillingdon, while Kensington and Chelsea and Harrow fared the best.
Intelligence has shown adult gangs “grooming” teenagers as gun runners. Mandatory sentences apply for possessing a gun only if the person is 21 and over.
The Met’s Operation Trident, which investigates shootings in the black community, has launched a campaign targeting 11-to 16-year-olds.
Until April last year the squad had not charged anybody under 20 with murder. Since then 16 teenagers have been charged including one aged just 14.
According to separate figures from the Youth Justice Board, half of all juveniles (10- to 17-year-olds) convicted in London in 2004-5 were White British, 28 per cent were Black and seven per cent were Asian.
A spokeswoman for the board said: “Many of the children we deal with are from broken homes and have been physically and emotionally abused. Falling out of education is one of the biggest factors in child crime and we try and work with likely offenders to prevent them from doing so.
“We’d like to see less under-13s receive custodial sentences but in some instances it can be beneficial as they are receiving education for the first time in years.
"While terrible things go on and there is a problem with anti-social behaviour there is also a tremendous appetite to condemn children for being loud and bumptious.
“There are many children that youth offending teams have worked with who have managed to turn their lives around.”
Each kid should have 40 acres to play on and there should be 40 acres between each kid............
And as we do they want to slap them on the wrist and turn them back out into society.
Once again, the unintended consequences of socialism at work.
As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
That is a PC way (in the UK) of saying muslim...
Return to the old, violent Druid culture in post-Christian Britain.
Hey don't forget the trans-fats.
They put rats into a cage one at a time. At some predetermined number the rats started turning on each other. It depended on the number of rats per square foot of cage I believe.
When you get into overcrowding in a city I would be willing to bet that the same type of thing applies.
When you get a certain number of people per square foot they start exhibiting manical behaviour.
It wasn't that way in the '80s. I was there quite often during that decade.
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