To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate he has made of the percentage of young people who have been victims of crime; and if he will make a statement. [40023]
While it is difficult to make a dependable estimate of the overall percentage of young people who have been victims of crime, a good deal of information is available from the 1992 British Crime Survey (BCS), the 1993 Youth Lifestyle Survey (YLS), and from a special data collection exercise on violent crime recorded by the police.According to the 1992 BCS, 60 per cent. of 12 to 15 year olds had experienced a theft, non-family assault and/or harassment in the six to eight months prior to the survey. Most of these incidents were not judged to be crimes by the victim: 18 per cent. had experienced something they regarded as a crime. The full findings are
| Victimisation rates by offence, average 1990–94 Rates per 100,000 population2 | |||||||
| Violence against the person | Indecent assault1 | Robbery and theft from the person | |||||
| Rape Male | Female | Female | Male | Female | Male | Female | |
| Age of victim | |||||||
| 0–9 | 94 | 62 | 6 | 25 | 94 | 8 | 2 |
| 10–15 | 704 | 373 | 59 | 66 | 327 | 331 | 54 |
| 16–24 | 1,234 | 704 | 58 | 11 | 130 | 305 | 116 |
| 25–39 | 634 | 463 | 21 | 3 | 37 | 168 | 93 |
| 40–59 | 273 | 153 | 5 | 1 | 10 | 109 | 66 |
| 60 and over | 64 | 26 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 44 | 81 |
| Total | 477 | 271 | 18 | 7 | 63 | 144 | 67 |
| Coverage of recorded offences | (50%) | (72%) | (64%) | (55%) | |||
| 1 Including buggery offences | |||||||
| 2 Represents the number of victimisations per 100,000 population in each respective age group | |||||||