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Street Offences Act 1959

Volume 467: debated on Monday 19 November 2007

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many offences under the Street Offences Act 1959 there were in each year since 1997; and how many of those convicted were (a) 16 or 17-years-old and (b) 18 years or older. (164405)

The information requested on the number of defendants found guilty under the Street Offences Act 1959 in England and Wales for the years 1997-2005 is provided in the following table. Information for 2006 will be available at the end of November 2007.

Number of defendants found guilty at all courts under the Street Offences Act 1959 section 1, England and Wales 1997 to 20051,2

16-17

18 and over

All ages

1997

146

5,543

5,695

1998

109

5,112

5,223

1999

38

3,339

3,378

20003

21

3,374

3,397

2001

6

2,834

2,841

2002

6

2,662

2,668

2003

3

2,624

2,627

2004

3

1,732

1,735

2005

0

1,115

1,116

1 These data are on the principal offence basis. 2 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 large administrative data systems generated by the police forces and courts. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used. 3 Staffordshire police force were only able to submit sample data for persons proceeded against and convicted in the magistrates courts for the year 2000. Although sufficient to estimate higher orders of data, these data are not robust enough at a detailed level and have been excluded from the table. Source: Court proceedings database held by RDS Office for Criminal Justice Reform. Our ref. IOS 396-07 (Table).