An estimate of youth crime in England and Wales: Police recorded crime committed by young people in 2009/10
Source: data.gov.uk (2014-05-09)

An estimate of the proportion and number of police recorded crimes committed by young people aged 10 to 17 in 2009/10. The approach used was to apply data on proven offending from the Police National Computer, which contains the key information on the age of proven offenders, to police recorded crime statistics. The analysis estimates that young people aged 10 to 17 were responsible for 23 per cent of police recorded crime in 2009/10, equivalent to just over a million police recorded crimes. This finding highlights the importance of tackling crime by young people in reducing overall levels of crime.

Research Report 64	
Key implications
An estimate of youth crime in England and Wales:
Police recorded crime committed by young people in 2009/10
Christine Cooper and Stephen Roe
Key implications
This report provides an estimate of the proportion and 
number of police recorded crimes committed by young 
people aged 10 to 17 in 2009/10.
The approach used was to apply data on proven offending 
from the Police National Computer, which contains the 
key information on the age of proven offenders, to police 
recorded crime statistics. An adjustment was made to 
account for potential bias in the data on proven offending 
related to age differences in offending involving more than 
one perpetrator. 
●
●The analysis estimates that young people aged 10 
to 17 were responsible for 23 per cent of police 
recorded crime in 2009/10, equivalent to just over a 
million police recorded crimes.
●
●Young men aged 10 to 17 were found to be 
responsible for 20 per cent of all police recorded 
crime in 2009/10 and young women responsible for 
only four per cent.
●
●Acquisitive offences comprised a greater proportion 
of youth crime compared with crime committed by 
adults while violent offences accounted for a higher 
proportion of crime committed by adults compared 
with youth crime.
Although young people aged 10 to 17 were responsible 
for a minority of incidents of police recorded crime, 
the estimate of around one in four incidents of police 
recorded crime attributable to young people represents 
a disproportionate amount of crime given that 10- to 
17-year-olds account for only about one in ten of the 
population above the age of criminal responsibility (age 
10). This finding highlights the importance of tackling 
crime by young people in reducing overall levels of crime.
Contents
1.	 Introduction
2.	 Method
3.	 Results
4.	 Conclusion
Appendix A: Additional Tables
References
Keywords
Youth crime
Young people
Crime
Young offenders
Co-offending
Police recorded crime
The views expressed in this report are those of the authors, not necessarily those of the Home Office (nor do they reflect Government policy).
You may re-use this information (not including logos) free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government Licence. 
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or e-mail: xxx@xxx.xx
© Crown copyright 2012
ISSN 1756-3666
ISBN 978-1-84987-756-5
May 2012

Research Report 64	
Summary
An estimate of youth crime in England and Wales:
Police recorded crime committed by young people in 2009/10
Christine Cooper and Stephen Roe
Context
The aim of this study was to estimate how much crime is 
attributable to young people aged 10 to 17. 
Existing evidence shows that young people are more likely 
to offend than adults, yet there is no current, generally 
accepted measure of the level of youth crime in England 
and Wales. The Home Office has overall responsibility for 
crime reduction so has an interest in broader measures 
of youth crime beyond proven offending. Measures 
based on the proven offending of young people, such as 
first-time entrants to the Criminal Justice System (CJS) 
and re-offending rates, provide only partial measures as 
many offences and offenders are not processed by the 
CJS. Crime statistics include many incidents that are not 
brought to justice but do not typically include the age of 
the offender, which is not usually known until the offender 
is caught and processed through the CJS. A previous 
estimate of the extent of youth crime, based on a national 
self-reported offending survey in 2003, indicated that 35 
per cent of offences were committed by young people 
aged 10 to 17 (Budd et al., 2005). The issue with this 
estimate is that it included many low-level offences that 
many people would not usually regard as a crime.
Approach
The method used in this analysis to estimate the level of 
youth crime was to apply data on proven offending from 
the Police National Computer (PNC), which contains basic 
demographic characteristics on all known offenders, to 
crime statistics that record crimes irrespective of whether 
or not they are detected. Police recorded crime statistics 
were used as the basis of this analysis (rather than those 
based on the British Crime Survey) because these data have 
a more complete coverage of crime types and the offence 
categories match to those used in proven offending data. 
An estimate of the level of youth crime was initially 
calculated based on the proportion of all proven offences 
for which young people had been cautioned, convicted
or given a Fixed Penalty Notice. This estimate was 
refined by applying the proportions of each offence 
type committed by young people to the relevant police 
recorded crime offence categories. Co-offending, in
which an offence involves multiple offenders, would result 
in ‘double-counting’ within the data on proven offences. 
This was adjusted for using data from the PNC on
proven co-offending. 
Results
Overall, once co-offending has been taken into account, 
the analysis found that young people aged 10 to 17 were 
responsible for 1.01 million crimes in 2009/10, 23 per 
cent of total police recorded crime in that year. This 
represents a disproportionate amount of crime given 
that 10- to 17-year-olds account for about one in ten of 
the population aged 10 (the age of criminal responsibility) 
and above. Dividing the estimate by gender indicated that 
about 860,000 crimes were committed by young men 
in 2009/10 and 160,000 by young women. This equated 
to around 20 per cent of total police recorded crime in 
2009/10 being attributable to young men and four per 
cent to young women (Table 1).1
The basic data from the PNC on proven offences 
committed during 2009/10 showed that young people 
(aged 10 to 17) were responsible for 20 per cent of 
notifiable offences (equivalent to those offences that 
constitute crime recorded by the police). However, the 
proportion of proven offences committed by young 
people varied considerably by offence type from around 
1	 Proportions for men and women do not add up to the total
due to rounding.
The views expressed in this report are those of the authors, not necessarily those of the Home Office (nor do they reflect Government policy).
You may re-use this information (not including logos) free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government Licence. 
To view this licence, visit http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/ 
or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, 
or e-mail: xxx@xxx.xx
© Crown copyright 2012
ISSN 1756-3666
ISBN 978-1-84987-756-5
May 2012

Research Report 64	
May 2012
iii
one in two (51%) robbery offences to fewer than one in 
ten (7%) fraud and forgery offences. The proportion of 
proven offences committed by young people for each 
offence type was applied to the total number of police 
recorded crimes of that type in 2009/10 and summed. 
This generated a basic estimate of 1.06 million crimes 
committed by young people in 2009/10, which came to 
the attention of the police, equivalent to 25 per cent of 
total police recorded crime in that year.
Adjusting the basic youth crime estimate for co-offending 
resulted in a refined estimate of 1.01 million crimes 
committed by young people in 2009/10, 23 per cent of 
total police recorded crime. This small downward shift to 
the basic estimate (from 25% to 23%) is to be expected 
as young people are more likely to co-offend than adults, 
but for both adults and young people co-offending is less 
common than sole offending.
The analysis of police recorded crime committed by 
young people was also used to examine the nature of 
youth crime. Acquisitive offences, which include robbery, 
burglary, offences against vehicles, other theft (including 
shoplifting) and fraud and forgery, accounted for a 
higher proportion of youth crime compared with crime 
committed by adults (58% compared with 51%) while 
violent offences accounted for a higher proportion of 
crime committed by adults compared with youth crime 
(22% compared with 15%).
Knowledge gaps
There is a lack of detailed information about how the 
attrition process, the filtering that takes place from crimes 
being committed to offenders being found guilty, differs 
between young people and adults. Therefore the analysis 
was unable to take account of potential differences in 
the likelihood of adults and young people being brought 
to justice for their crimes. Recent youth crime policy 
has sought to divert young people away from the CJS, 
suggesting that they are less likely to be given a formal 
sanction and would therefore be under-represented in 
the proven offending data used to construct this estimate. 
Consequently this analysis is likely to be an under-
estimate of police recorded crime committed by young 
people. However, there is no evidence on differences in 
attrition at other stages, for example we do not know 
about differences in young people and adults being caught 
for their crimes. 
The lack of information on how attrition differs by age 
means that the main assumption underlying the estimate 
is that the attrition rate does not differ between young 
people and adults. Further research into the attrition 
process and how this differs by age and gender would be 
useful in order to test and refine this assumption. 
Table 1: Estimates of police recorded crime committed by young people by gender, 2009/10

All 10 to 17
Men aged 10 to 17 Women aged 10 to 17
Basic estimate
Number (000s)
1,064
897
165
Percentage
25
21
4
Adjusted for
co-offending
Number (000s)
1,014
857
155
Percentage
23
20
4
Note: Numbers for men and women may not add up to ‘all’ due to missing data on gender.

Research Report 64	
The report
An estimate of youth crime in England and Wales:
Police recorded crime committed by young people in 2009/10
Christine Cooper and Stephen Roe
1.	 Introduction
The aim of this study is to estimate how much crime is 
attributable to young people and to consider patterns of 
youth offending in order to increase our understanding of 
the extent and nature of youth crime. Young people are 
defined here as those aged between 10 and 17 years old, 
the age group dealt with by the Youth Justice System. 
Evidence on both self-reported and proven offending 
has shown that young people are more likely to offend 
than adults (Budd et al., 2005; MoJ, 2011a). However, 
there is no current, generally accepted measure of the 
level of youth crime in England and Wales. A previous 
estimate of the extent of crime attributable to young 
people in England and Wales was based on data from a 
self-reported offending survey, the 2003 Offending Crime 
and Justice Survey (OCJS). According to the 2003 OCJS, 
35 per cent of the incidents measured by the survey 
were accounted for by 10- to 17-year-olds (Budd et al., 
2005). Yet this estimate will have included many low-level 
incidents that many people, including the participants 
themselves, will not perceive to be serious enough to be 
a ‘crime’, such as minor assaults not involving injury taking 
place between pupils in school. 
The Home Office, with its overall responsibility for 
preventing and reducing crime, has a particular interest 
in looking beyond levels of proven offending to a broader 
measure of youth crime that takes account of all crimes 
that have been recorded by the police, even if no offender 
has been brought to justice for the crime. Generally, 
measures based on the proven offending of young people, 
such as first-time entrants to the Criminal Justice System 
(CJS) (MoJ, 2011b) and re-offending rates (MoJ, 2011a) 
have been used as indicators of the level of youth crime, 
but these provide only partial measures as many offences 
and offenders are not processed by the CJS. Official
crime statistics do include those many incidents that
are not brought to justice but do not typically include
the age of the offender, because this is not usually
known until the offender is caught and processed through 
the CJS. This study aims to overcome some of the 
limitations of statistics on crime and proven offending
by combining these data sources in order to produce a 
youth crime estimate. 
The views expressed in this report are those of the authors, not necessarily those of the Home Office (nor do they reflect Government policy).
You may re-use this information (not including logos) free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government Licence. 
To view this licence, visit http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/ 
or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, 
or e-mail: xxx@xxx.xx
May 2012
© Crown copyright 2012
ISSN 1756-3666
ISBN 978-1-84987-756-5

An estimate of youth crime in England and Wales: Police recorded crime committed by young people in 2009/10
2
2.	 Method
The method used here to estimate the level of youth 
crime is based on a technique used previously in a report 
for the Scottish Executive to measure the extent of youth 
crime in Scotland (DTZ Pieda Consulting, 2005). The 
approach is to apply data on proven offending, which 
contains basic demographic characteristics on all proven 
offenders, to crime statistics that include all offences 
reported to the police, regardless of whether an offender 
has been found guilty.
Official crime statistics cannot be used by themselves 
to estimate the number of crimes committed by young 
people, because the statistics are based on reports by 
the victims of crime, most of whom would not have seen 
the offender and therefore would not be able to provide 
information about their age.  This means that little is 
known about offenders until they are caught and proven 
guilty for their offences. 	
Official crime statistics are available from two main 
sources: the British Crime Survey (BCS), a victimisation 
survey of adults resident in households in England and 
Wales, and police recorded crime. Comparing the two 
sources of crime statistics, police recorded crime only 
captures incidents that are reported to and recorded by 
the police while the BCS attempts to capture all crimes 
(whether or not reported to the police) committed 
against households and individuals (see Figure 1). Police 
recorded crime statistics are used as the basis of this 
estimate of youth crime because these data have a 
more complete coverage of crime types. The BCS is a 
victimisation survey of the resident household population, 
so it omits particular crime types, such as crimes against 
businesses (e.g. shoplifting), which may be particularly 
important for this age group. The police recorded crime 
types map more closely to the offence types captured 
within statistics on proven offending, which are used to 
gather information on the age of offenders for the youth 
crime measure. 
There are two main sources of data on proven offending 
in England and Wales. There is information on flows 
through the Criminal Justice System (MoJ, 2011a; YJB, 
2012) and data on proven offending are also available
from the Police National Computer (PNC). Information 
from the PNC has been used for this analysis because
the data can be extracted on an offence and on an 
offender basis, rather than by episode in the CJS
(such as a court appearance). 
●
●The PNC includes details of proven ‘recordable’ 
offences. The disposals included in the count of 
proven offences in the analysis below include 
convictions, cautions and Fixed Penalty Notices.2 
Including this broad range of disposals ensured 
that the analysis was not affected by any greater 
likelihood of young people receiving one of these 
disposals rather than another.
●
●The ‘recordable’ offences on the PNC represent a 
broader range of crime types than the ‘notifiable’ 
offences that police forces are required to report to 
the Home Office for inclusion in police recorded crime 
statistics (see Figure 1). The subset of proven offences 
on the PNC that represent ‘notifiable’ offences were 
the focus of this analysis in order to ensure that 
the estimates derived from the PNC analysis were 
applicable to the police recorded crime data.
●
●The PNC also includes basic demographic data 
(age, gender and ethnic group) on proven offenders, 
which enable a breakdown of offences committed 
by young people. In this analysis, young people are 
considered to be those aged 10 to 17, reflecting 
the age range covered by the Youth Justice System. 
The small number of offences (0.1% of all proven 
offences) for which the age of the offender was 
unknown were excluded from the analysis.
An initial estimate of the level of youth crime was 
calculated directly from PNC data based on the proportion 
of all proven offences for which young people had been 
cautioned, convicted or given a Fixed Penalty Notice.3 By 
using recorded crime data and looking at each crime type 
separately, a more precise estimate was generated by 
taking account of the differences in the volume of recorded 
crimes in each crime type and the proportion of each 
recorded crime type committed by young people. This 
approach of looking at individual crime types also provided 
valuable information on the patterns of youth offending. 
A breakdown of the estimate by gender has also been 
provided in order to give a more detailed picture of youth 
crime as men and women are responsible for different 
levels of offending and for different types of crime. 
2	 Accepting a Fixed Penalty Notice does not necessarily mean that 
the offender has been found guilty. Nevertheless, Fixed Penalty 
Notices are included in this measure in order to capture the 
lower-level disorder that may be an important feature of youth 
crime. Offences taken into consideration are not included in the 
measure due to uncertainty over data quality.
3	 This approach was used by the National Audit Office (NAO)
in their report on youth offending (NAO, 2010).

Research Report 64	
May 2012
3
Figure 1: Numbers of crimes and proven offences, 2009/10

F
igure 1: 
Numbers o
f crimes 
& proven 
offences, 2009/10
Assumptions and limitations
There are a number of assumptions underlying the 
methodology that may lead to biases in the estimate. The 
way the data on proven offences are counted means that 
if a single crime is committed by two offenders it will be 
recorded twice on the PNC. This factor may also bias 
the estimate of youth crime if, as suggested by previous 
literature, young people are more likely to co-offend 
compared with adults (van Mastrigt and Farrington, 2009). 
The PNC includes information on co-offenders for all 
the disposals included here, enabling adjustments to the 
estimate to be made to take co-offending into account.4
There are other potential sources of bias that arise
from the process of attrition from committing a criminal 
act through to the police recording it as a crime and the 
crime being ‘solved’ and a person being ‘found guilty’.
For example, in 2009/10 the BCS estimated that there 
were 9.6 million personal and household crimes, whereas 
4.3 million crimes were recorded by the police and only 
1.2 million incidents ‘cleared up’ by a detection (Flatley et 
al., 2010). 
4	 The adjustment of the estimate for co-offending assumes that
co-offenders belong to the same age and sex group as the offender. 
Previous analysis of self-reported offending data has suggested that 
co-offenders tend to be from the same age group and most men 
offend with men but women are quite likely to offend with men 
(Budd et al., 2005).
A key potential source of bias for this estimate of youth 
crime is a difference between young people and adults 
in the attrition rate from police recording the crime 
to an offender being brought to justice. Recent youth 
justice policy has attempted to divert some young 
offenders away from the formal CJS (for example through 
restorative justice schemes), suggesting that young people 
may be less likely than adults to receive formal sanctions 
and would therefore be under-represented in the proven 
offending data used to construct this youth crime 
estimate. This suggests that the estimate of both the 
proportion and extent of youth crime presented here is 
likely to be an under-estimate, although the degree of the 
under-estimate is not clear. In addition, there are other 
aspects of the attrition process, such as the likelihood 
of being caught, for which even less is known about how 
this differs between young people and adults. Although 
detection rates provide an indication of the extent of 
attrition between police recorded crime and proven 
offences, detection rates are only available differentiated 
by offence type and not by age. In the absence of this 
information, the estimate relies on the assumption that 
the attrition rate does not vary between young people 
and adults.
For offences where detection rates are high, there is less 
scope for variation in attrition between young people
and adults. Hence, there can be greater confidence in
the estimates of youth crime for the specific offence
types with higher levels of detection. Drug offences
and shoplifting have relatively high detection rates

An estimate of youth crime in England and Wales: Police recorded crime committed by young people in 2009/10
4
(94% and 61% respectively in 2009/10) which mean 
that the estimates of the percentage of these crimes 
committed by young people are more likely to be
accurate as they are less likely to be affected by
variations in attrition between young people and adults. 
Conversely, the estimates of youth crime for offences 
against vehicles, burglary and criminal damage (which
all had detection rates of less than 15% in 2009/10)
may be less accurate (Flatley et al., 2010).
The number of crimes committed by young people 
estimated in this analysis will be an under-estimate 
because the analysis is based on police recorded crime, 
which represents only a minority of actual crimes 
committed due to the attrition involved between the 
occurrence of a crime and the crime being reported to 
and recorded by the police (40% of BCS incidents are 
reported to the police). The extent to which the relative 
proportion of crime attributed to young people would be 
altered by consideration of unrecorded crime is less clear. 
As with detection rates, reporting rates for crime cannot 
be differentiated by age of the offender. Considering the 
different composition of youth and adult proven offending, 
some of the offence types that form a greater component 
of youth offending (compared to adult offending), such 
as robbery and burglary, have relatively high reporting 
rates, while other offence types, such as criminal damage/
vandalism, have relatively low reporting rates (Flatley et 
al., 2010).
3.	 Results
This section presents the results from a series of analyses 
bringing together data on proven offences from the PNC 
with police recorded crime statistics. The data used were 
from the PNC relating to offences committed in 2009/10 
(rather than offences brought to justice in 2009/10) and 
police recorded crimes for the same period. The section 
starts with a basic estimate of the proportion of recorded 
crime accounted for by young people, and then presents 
further analysis to improve and refine the estimate. The 
end result is a best estimate that young people aged 10 to 
17 were responsible for 23 per cent of police recorded 
crime in 2009/10, equivalent to 1.01 million crimes.
Basic estimate
An initial estimate of the proportion of crime accounted 
for by young people can be calculated directly from the 
proportion of proven offences on the PNC committed 
by young people. Young people were responsible for 16 
per cent of total recordable offences on the PNC. A 
significant proportion (around a third) of the other (non-
notifiable) offences included on the PNC are motoring 
offences that many young people in the 10 to 17 age range 
are not in a position to commit. The remainder of the 
analysis is based only on notifiable offences as this enables 
the link to be made with police recorded crime.
According to data from the PNC on proven offences 
committed during 2009/10, young people (aged 10 to 17) 
were responsible for 20 per cent of notifiable offences. 
Using the total number of proven offences committed 
by young people as the basis of the youth crime estimate 
does not take account of the very different proportions 
of each of the crime types committed by young people. 
The proportion of each crime type (based on notifiable 
offence groupings) for which young people were 
responsible  varied considerably from around one in two 
(51%) robbery offences to fewer than one in ten (7%) 
fraud and forgery offence.5 Robbery, burglary, offences
against vehicles, other theft and criminal damage were 
all more likely than average to be committed by young 
people (Figure 2, Table A.1).
5	 It should be noted that fraud is a particularly challenging offence to 
measure as incidents are known to be significantly under-reported 
to the police.

Research Report 64	
May 2012
5
Figure 2: Percentage of proven offences committed by young people aged 10 to 17, PNC 2009/10

F
ig
ur
e 2
: 
Pe
rc
entage of proven offences commited by young people aged 10 to 17, PNC 2009/10
To refine the estimate of the proportion of crime that is 
committed by young people, the proportion of proven 
offences by young people for each offence type (given in 
Figure 2) was applied to the total number of police recorded 
offences in that crime type in 2009/10 and summed. This 
takes account of the differences in the proportion of 
different types of crime committed by young people. Using 
this method generated an estimate of 1.06 million crimes 
committed by young people in 2009/10, which came to the 
attention of the police (Table A.2). This is equivalent to 
25 per cent of total police recorded crime in 2009/10 and 
provides a basic estimate that can be refined further.
Adjustment for co-offending
As previously discussed, a potential source of bias in the 
estimate of the amount of crime committed by young 
people is co-offending, when more than one offender is 
involved in committing an offence. When co-offending 
occurs, although only one crime would be recorded 
within police recorded crime statistics, counts of proven 
offending would register that crime for each offender 
involved. The PNC database includes details on co-
offending, which enables this issue to be examined and 
accounted for by an adjustment to the estimate. 
The degree of co-offending can be expressed as the 
average number of offenders per offence. Overall, 
there were 1.06 offenders per proven notifiable offence 
committed in 2009/10. For young people there were 1.12 
offenders per proven notifiable offence while for adults 
there were 1.05, confirming previous findings of greater 
co-offending amongst young people (Tables 2 and A.3). 
This estimate of co-offending from the PNC is lower 
than has been found in other studies (for example van 
Mastrigt and Farrington, 2009). A possible explanation 
is the different stage in the CJS when the co-offending is 
identified. The analysis of co-offending used here is based 
on PNC data, which will only record proven co-offenders 
who are found guilty of the same incident by being given
a conviction, caution or Fixed Penalty Notice. While
these figures are likely to under-estimate the true extent 
of co-offending, this will not affect the reliability of the 
estimate because the adjustment relates to bias that arises 
from the way data are presented in the PNC data rather 
than actual co-offending. 
Co-offending was greater for the offence types of robbery 
and burglary than for other offences (again in accordance 
with previous research, Reiss and Farrington, 1991). 
Higher levels of co-offending amongst young people 

An estimate of youth crime in England and Wales: Police recorded crime committed by young people in 2009/10
6
compared to adults was consistent across most offence 
types apart from those that were least likely to involve 
co-offending (drug offences and sexual offences), where 
the difference between the age groups was negligible 
(Table 2).
The average number of offenders per offence (shown in 
Table 2) can be used to generate alternative estimates of 
the proportion of each proven offence type attributable 
to young people (an alternative to the estimates shown 
in Figure 2) that take into account co-offending. This is 
done by dividing the number of proven offences for each 
offence type and age group used to calculate the basic 
estimate by the average number of offenders per offence. 
Applying the adjusted estimates of the percentage of 
proven offences by offence type attributable to young 
people to the police recorded crime figures provided an 
alternative estimate of 1.01 million crimes committed 
by young people in 2009/10, 23 per cent of total police 
recorded crime (Table A.4). This small downward shift to 
the basic estimate (from 25% to 23%) is to be expected 
as young people are more likely to co-offend than adults, 
but for both adults and young people co-offending is less 
common than sole offending (Table A.3). 
Analysis by gender
The PNC data on proven offending includes gender as 
well as age for (almost) all known offenders, enabling 
the estimate of youth crime to be calculated separately 
for young men and young women.6 According to PNC 
data, of the proven offences committed during 2009/10, 
young men were responsible for 15 per cent of notifiable 
offences while young women were responsible for five per 
cent (Figure 3, Table A.5). 
As expected, young men were responsible for a greater 
proportion of youth crime compared with young women 
and this is reflected within each offence type with the 
notable exception of shoplifting (Figure 3, Table A.5). 
Young women were responsible for five per cent or 
less of proven offences for each offence type except 
shoplifting, for which they were responsible for 11 per 
cent of proven offences committed in 2009/10 (compared 
with young men who were responsible for 9% of 
shoplifting offences).
The proportion of proven offences by young men and 
young women for each offence type (shown in Figure 
3 and Table A.5) can be applied to the total number of 
Table 2: Average number of offenders per proven notifiable offence by offence type and age 
group, PNC 2009/10

Offence type
Average number of offenders per offence
10 - to 17-year-olds
18 years and over
Violence Against the Person
1.08
1.04
Sexual
1.03
1.02
Robbery
1.32
1.23
Burglary
1.24
1.13
Offences Against Vehicles
1.18
1.08
Shoplifting
1.17
1.05
Other Theft (not shoplifting)
1.13
1.09
Fraud and Forgery
1.08
1.04
Criminal Damage
1.11
1.03
Drug Offences
1.04
1.04
Other Miscellaneous
1.13
1.06
Total Notifiable
1.12
1.05
6	 Only 0.4 per cent of proven offences in 2009/10 were committed 
by an offender whose gender was unknown and these cases are 
excluded from the analysis.

Research Report 64	
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7
Figure 3: Percentage of proven offences committed by young people aged 10 to 17 by gender, 
PNC 2009/10

Figure 3: Pe
rcentage of proven offences c
o
mm
it
ed
 b
y 
young people aged 10 to 17 by gender, PNC 2009/10
police recorded offences in that crime type in 2009/10, 
in the same way as the basic estimate of youth crime was 
calculated above. This method generated an estimate 
of about 900,000 crimes committed by young men in 
2009/10 and 170,000 by young women. This is equivalent 
to 21 per cent of total police recorded crime in 2009/10 
being attributable to young men and four per cent to 
young women. 
The estimates of youth crime for men and women can be 
adjusted for co-offending in the same way as the overall 
estimate was adapted above. 
In terms of co-offending, young women appear to be 
slightly more likely than young men to co-offend but the 
difference in co-offending by gender is not as great as 
the difference by age (Tables 3 and A.6). Greater co-
offending amongst women would suggest that they are 
over-represented in the figures on proven offending, in 
which multiple offenders involved in an offence results in 
‘double-counting’. 
Co-offending was taken into account by dividing the 
number of proven offences of each proven offence type 
committed by young men and young women by the 
number of proven offenders per offence, as shown in 
Table 2, and then applied to the police recorded crime 
figures. This generated an alternative estimate of about 
860,000 crimes committed by young men in 2009/10 and 
160,000 by young women. This equates to around 20 
per cent of total police recorded crime in 2009/10 being 
attributable to young men and four per cent to young 
women (Table 4).7
The analysis confirms that young women were responsible 
for much lower levels of youth crime than were young 
men. Young men were estimated to be responsible for 85 
per cent of youth crime. Looking at the same estimate of 
7	 This adjusted estimate for co-offending appears to lower the 
proportion of youth crime attributable to young men rather than 
young women despite higher co-offending amongst young women. 
However, the decrease in the estimate for young women is 
disguised by rounding of the figures. Both estimates for young men 
and young women are reduced when co-offending is taken into 
account as young people co-offend more than adults. The estimate 
for young women is reduced proportionately by a greater extent 
but this does not appear in the figures as the estimate for young 
women is already low, so the absolute decrease in the estimate for 
young women is lower than for young men.

An estimate of youth crime in England and Wales: Police recorded crime committed by young people in 2009/10
8
Table 3: Average number of offenders per proven notifiable offence committed by young people 
by offence type and gender, PNC 2009/10

Offence type
Average number of offenders per offence
Men aged 10 to 17
Women aged 10 to 17
Violence Against the Person
1.08
1.08
Sexual
1.03
1.02
Robbery
1.32
1.36
Burglary
1.24
1.34
Offences Against Vehicles
1.18
1.22
Shoplifting
1.12
1.22
Other Theft (not shoplifting)
1.13
1.13
Fraud and Forgery
1.07
1.11
Criminal Damage
1.11
1.10
Drug Offences
1.04
1.05
Other Miscellaneous
1.13
1.14
Total Notifiable
1.11
1.14
Table 4: Estimates of police recorded crime committed by young people by gender, 2009/10

All 10 to 17
Men aged 10 to 17 Women aged 10 to 17
Basic estimate
Number (000s)
1,064
897
165
Percentage
25
21
4
Adjusted for
co-offending
Number (000s)
1,014
857
155
Percentage
23
20
4
Note: Numbers for men and women may not add up to ‘all’ due to missing data on gender.
police recorded crime committed by young people from 
an alternative perspective, young men were responsible 
for 23 per cent of crime by all men and young women 25 
per cent of all crime by women. 
The nature of youth crime
The analysis of police recorded crime committed by 
young people can also be used to examine the nature of 
youth crime and to make comparisons between the types 
of crime committed by young people and adults.8
8	 Figures given in this section are based on estimates of police 
recorded crime committed by young people that have been 
adjusted for co-offending.
Overall, there was a similar pattern in the composition of 
adult and youth crime. Other theft (including shoplifting) 
represented the biggest share of each (24% of crime 
committed by both 10- to 17-year-olds and those aged 
18 and over). Criminal damage offences accounted for 
the next biggest share of crime committed by young 
people aged 10 to 17 (21%), while violence against the 
person offences represented the next greatest proportion 
of police recorded crime committed by adults (22%). 
Acquisitive offences, which include robbery, burglary, 
offences against vehicles, other theft (including shoplifting) 
and fraud and forgery, accounted for a higher proportion 
of youth crime compared with crime committed by adults 
(58% compared with 51%; Figure 4).

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9
Figure 4: Composition by offence type of estimated recorded crimes committed by young 
people and adults, 2009/10

Figure 4: Co
mposition by offence type of
 
e
st
im
at
ed
 recorded crimes co
mmitted by yo
ung people aand
 adults, 2009/10
The types of crime committed by young men and young 
women can also be compared, bearing in mind that 
the figures for the composition of crime committed by 
young women are based on a far lower volume of crimes. 
Violence against the person offences represented a 
greater proportion of police recorded crime committed 
by young women compared with young men (26% 
compared with 13%), while criminal damage offences 
accounted for equal shares of crime committed by 
young men and young women (21% of each). Amongst 
acquisitive offences, shoplifting represented a much 
higher proportion of crime committed by young women 
compared with young men (19% compared with 3%) 
while robbery, burglary and offences against vehicles each 
accounted for larger shares of crime by young men (4%, 
18% and 16% respectively) compared with young women 
(2%, 6% and 4% respectively)(Figure 5).
Comparison with previous estimates
Comparing the new youth crime estimate produced in 
the analysis above to previous estimates can give some 
indication of the validity of the new estimate. 
A previous estimate of the extent of crime attributable 
to young people in England and Wales has been produced 
based on data from a national self-reported offending 
survey, the 2003 Offending, Crime and Justice Survey 
(OCJS). According to the 2003 OCJS, 35 per cent of the 
incidents measured by the survey were accounted for by 
10- to 17-year-olds, although many of these incidents will 
have been relatively trivial (Budd et al., 2005).
The overall adjusted estimate of 23 per cent of police 
recorded crime attributable to 10- to 17-year-olds is 
lower than the 35 per cent of self-reported offences 
attributable to 10- to 17-year-olds from the OCJS. This 
would be expected given that more of the self-reported 
offences committed by young people rather than by adults 
would be relatively minor (for example, non-injury assaults 
represent a greater proportion of self-reported offending 
by young people) and take place in contexts (such as within 
school) that would mean that they were less likely to 
come to the attention of the police and would therefore 
not be included in this new youth crime estimate. 

An estimate of youth crime in England and Wales: Police recorded crime committed by young people in 2009/10
10
Figure 5: Composition by offence type of estimated recorded crimes committed by young 
people by gender, 2009/10

Figure 5: Co
mposition by offence type of
 
e
st
im
at
ed
 recorded crimes committed by young by gender, 2009/10
However, when the figures for the percentage of police 
recorded crime attributable to young men and young 
women are compared to the 2003 OCJS estimates, the 
figure for men is much more similar than the figure for 
women (20% and 22% for men compared with 4% and 
13% for women with the higher estimates for the OCJS). 
Previous comparisons of self-reported offending data 
with data on proven offending have also highlighted the 
greater gender differential for proven offending compared 
with self-reported offending (Budd et al., 2005). As 
women offenders appear to be less likely to have contact 
with the CJS, the low proportion of police recorded 
crime attributable to young women may be seen as a 
particular under-estimate. However, this finding does 
not necessarily imply gender bias in decision-making 
within the CJS as other influential factors, such as offence 
severity, are unable to be accounted for. Previous research 
in North America has suggested that, once other factors 
are taken into account, there is no evidence of gender 
bias in police arrests or juvenile justice processing 
(Farrington et al., 2010).
The 2003 OCJS also gave details of the profile of offences 
committed by young people and adults in the survey. The 
2003 OCJS found that violent crime formed a greater part 
of offending by young people compared with adults while 
acquisitive offences comprised a greater share of adult 
offending (Budd et al., 2005). The figures presented above 
based on police recorded crime and proven offending 
suggested the reverse. This discrepancy is likely to be 
explained (at least in part) by the fact that many of the 
violent offences reported in the OCJS were very minor 
(often involving little or no injury), especially those reported 
by young people. These minor assaults are less likely to be 
reported to the police and therefore less likely to appear in 
the estimate of police recorded crime committed by young 
people. The 2003 OCJS also indicated that violent offences 
accounted for a greater proportion of offending by women 
compared with offending by men and this is supported by 
the figures presented above based on the combination of 
proven offending and police recorded crime.9
9	 Estimates in the 2003 OCJS report refer to all women compared 
with all men while figures presented in this report relate to crime 
committed by men and women aged 10 to 17.

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11
The other previous figure to which this new youth crime 
estimate can be compared is the estimate produced for 
the Scottish Executive, which used a similar methodology. 
That report estimated 22–23 per cent of all crime 
(including crime not recorded by the police) in Scotland 
was accounted for by under-18s (DTZ Pieda Consulting, 
2005). That figure is very similar to the best estimate 
(23%) produced here for England and Wales for police 
recorded crime.
Overall, comparison of this youth crime estimate with 
the previous estimate of youth crime from the OCJS 
highlights considerable differences. These differences are 
to be expected given the nature of the data sources. The 
lower proportion of police recorded crime, as opposed 
to self-reported offences, attributable to young people 
reflects the often relatively minor nature of many of the 
offences captured in a self-reported offending survey such 
as the OCJS.  These offences are less likely to come to 
the attention of the police.
4.	 Conclusion
It has been well established that young people are more 
likely to offend than adults and will therefore account 
for a disproportionate amount of crime. As there is no 
way of directly counting youth crime, estimates or proxy 
measures have to be derived. These are often based 
on levels of proven offending by young people and such 
estimates will always undercount actual levels of crime. 
Building on a previous exercise undertaken in Scotland 
(DTZ Pieda Consulting, 2005), this study has produced
an estimate that young people aged 10 to 17 are 
responsible for nearly one-quarter (23%) of police 
recorded crime in England and Wales, equivalent to just 
over a million crimes.
It is evident from the youth crime estimate that young 
people account for a disproportionate amount of 
crime because 10- to 17-year-olds represent about one 
in ten (11%) of the population of England and Wales 
aged 10 and over (based on mid-2009 population 
estimates) yet account for around one in four incidents 
of police recorded crime (according to this analysis). 
The youth crime estimate produced here reinforces the 
significance of tackling crime by young people in reducing 
crime overall.
The analysis presented above has adopted the previously 
used methodology of applying the percentage of proven 
offences committed by young people to crime statistics 
but developed this by taking into account potential bias 
in the proven offending figures arising from co-offending. 
Adjusting for co-offending decreases the estimate of 
youth crime as young people are more likely to co-offend. 
This holds true for young men and young women. Proven 
offending data will under-estimate the extent of co-
offending because not all of those involved in an offence 
will be caught, but self-reported offending studies also 
indicate that the majority of offences are committed by 
sole offenders (Budd et al., 2005).
Given the assumptions and limitations of the analysis 
already outlined above, the youth crime estimate 
produced here should be seen as indicative and treated 
with caution. Any attempt to delineate trends over time 
in youth crime using replications of this estimate is fraught 
with difficulties of interpretation given the potential effect 
on the estimate of changes in the operation of the CJS. 
This youth crime estimate for 2009/10 should be seen in 
the context of a trend in decreasing use of out-of-court 
disposals and fewer first-time entrants to the CJS. The 

An estimate of youth crime in England and Wales: Police recorded crime committed by young people in 2009/10
12
trend has been seen amongst both adults and juveniles, 
but has been more accentuated amongst juveniles (MoJ, 
2011b). This trend of reduced formal processing for 
juveniles implies that young people will be less likely 
than adults to be represented in the proven offending 
figures used to generate this youth crime estimate, 
therefore making it likely that it is an under-estimate 
of the proportion and extent of police recorded crime 
attributable to young people.
The assumptions and limitations of the estimate generate 
some possibilities for further research that would enable 
the estimate to be refined. Further research into the 
attrition process from the commission of a crime to 
police recording a crime and an offence being proven and 
how this differs by age and gender would be useful. This 
further research could inform attempts to extrapolate 
from the data on proven offending, which has the key 
information on characteristics of the offender, to the 
broader measures of crime. 
Despite the limitations noted above, the youth crime 
estimate produced here provides a useful, alternative 
perspective on the extent and nature of crimes carried 
out by young people. By focusing on police recorded 
crime, the estimate overcomes the narrow remit of 
proven offences (which only include those offences 
brought to justice) and the broader range of self-reported 
offending (which include many relatively minor offences). 
The process of creating the estimate also provides 
valuable information, such as an indication of which crime 
types young people are most likely to be responsible 
for, which could help in considering the factors behind 
changes in particular crime types (e.g. robbery) that are 
most likely to be committed by young people.

Research Report 64	
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13
Appendix A: Additional tables
Table A.1: Number of proven offences by age group and offence type, PNC 2009/10

Numbers (000s) and percentages
England and Wales, proven offences
Offence group
All ages
10 to 17
% 10 to 17
Violence Against the Person
352.2
64.4
18%
Sexual
7.0
1.4
20%
Robbery
10.5
5.4
51%
Burglary
33.3
10.6
32%
Offences Against Vehicles
27.5
8.6
31%
Shoplifting
173.3
34.6
20%
Other Theft (not shoplifting)
66.1
17.0
26%
Fraud and Forgery
33.0
2.3
7%
Criminal Damage
107.1
30.3
28%
Drug Offences
139.1
18.4
13%
Other Miscellaneous
57.2
7.7
13%
Total Notifiable
1,006.3
200.7
20%
Other
486.7
44.5
9%
Total Recordable
1,493.0
245.2
16%
Table A.2: Estimated police recorded crime committed by young people aged 10 to 17 by 
offence type, 2009/10

Numbers (000s) and percentages
England and Wales, police recorded crime
Offence group
Total police recorded 
crime 
% 10 to 17
Police recorded crime 
committed by 10- to 
17-year-olds
Violence Against the Person
871.7
18%
159.3
Sexual
54.5
20%
10.7
Robbery
75.1
51%
38.4
Burglary
540.7
32%
172.5
Offences Against Vehicles
495.0
31%
154.0
Shoplifting
307.8
20%
61.5
Other Theft (not shoplifting)
729.6
26%
187.9
Fraud and Forgery
152.3
7%
10.7
Criminal Damage
806.7
28%
228.3
Drug Offences
235.0
13%
31.1
Other Miscellaneous
70.1
13%
9.4
Total Notifiable
4,338.6
1,063.9

An estimate of youth crime in England and Wales: Police recorded crime committed by young people in 2009/10
14
Table A.3 Proven co-offending by age group and offence type, PNC 2009/10

Numbers and percentages
England and Wales, proven offenders and offences
Offence group
Mean number of offenders per offence
% proven offences with co-offending
10 to 17
18+
10 to 17
18+
Violence Against the Person
1.08
1.04
8%
3%
Sexual
1.03
1.02
3%
2%
Robbery
1.32
1.23
24%
19%
Burglary
1.24
1.13
19%
11%
Offences Against Vehicles
1.18
1.08
15%
8%
Shoplifting
1.17
1.05
15%
5%
Other Theft (not shoplifting)
1.13
1.09
12%
8%
Fraud and Forgery
1.08
1.04
8%
4%
Criminal Damage
1.11
1.03
10%
3%
Drug Offences
1.04
1.04
4%
4%
Other Miscellaneous
1.13
1.06
12%
6%
Total Notifiable
1.12
1.05
11%
5%
Table A.4 Estimated police recorded crime by age group and offence type, 2009/10

Numbers (000s)
England and Wales, police recorded crime
Offence group
Police recorded crime committted by those aged
10 to 17
18 and over
All
Violence Against the Person
153.6
718.1
871.7
Sexual
10.6
43.9
54.5
Robbery
37.1
38.0
75.1
Burglary
161.3
379.3
540.7
Offences Against Vehicles
145.3
349.7
495.0
Shoplifting
56.5
251.4
307.8
Other Theft (not shoplifting)
182.1
547.5
729.6
Fraud and Forgery
10.3
142.0
152.3
Criminal Damage
216.7
590.0
806.7
Drug Offences
31.1
203.9
235.0
Other Miscellaneous
9.0
61.1
70.1
Total Notifiable
1,013.6
3,325.1
4,338.6
Note: The figures for those aged 10 to 17 presented in this table differ from those presented in Table A.2 as the estimate in this table has been 
adjusted for co-offending.

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15
Table A.5 Number of proven offences by gender, age group and offence type, PNC 2009/10

Numbers (000s) and percentages
England and Wales, proven offences
Offence group
Men
Women
% 10 to 17
10 to 17
18 and over
10 to 17
18 and over
Males
Females
Violence Against the Person
47.5
238.9
16.7
48.4
14%
5%
Sexual
1.3
5.5
0.0
0.1
19%
0%
Robbery
4.9
4.9
0.5
0.2
47%
4%
Burglary
10.0
21.6
0.6
1.0
30%
2%
Offences Against Vehicles
8.1
18.2
0.4
0.8
30%
2%
Shoplifting
15.7
92.8
18.6
45.5
9%
11%
Other Theft (not shoplifting)
14.3
39.5
2.7
9.5
22%
4%
Fraud and Forgery
1.7
23.3
0.6
7.3
5%
2%
Criminal Damage
25.7
68.0
4.4
8.6
24%
4%
Drug Offences
17.1
108.4
1.2
12.3
12%
1%
Other Miscellaneous
6.8
44.2
0.9
5.0
12%
2%
Total Notifiable
153.1
665.2
46.7
138.6
15%
5%
Note: Number of proven offences for males and females do not add up to totals given in Table A.1 due to missing data on gender.
Table A.6 Proven co-offending by age group, gender and offence type, PNC 2009/10

Numbers 
England and Wales, proven offenders
Offence group
Men
Women
10 to 17
18 and over
10 to 17
18 and over
Violence Against the Person
1.08
1.08
1.03
1.04
Sexual
1.03
1.02
1.02
1.07
Robbery
1.32
1.36
1.23
1.23
Burglary
1.24
1.34
1.12
1.17
Offences Against Vehicles
1.18
1.22
1.08
1.09
Shoplifting
1.12
1.22
1.05
1.07
Other Theft (not shoplifting)
1.13
1.13
1.09
1.08
Fraud and Forgery
1.07
1.11
1.04
1.04
Criminal Damage
1.11
1.10
1.03
1.03
Drug Offences
1.04
1.05
1.04
1.06
Other Miscellaneous
1.13
1.14
1.06
1.08
Total Notifiable
1.11
1.14
1.05
1.06

An estimate of youth crime in England and Wales: Police recorded crime committed by young people in 2009/10
16
Table A.7 Estimated police recorded crime by age group and offence type, 2009/10

Numbers (000s)
England and Wales, police recorded crime
Offence group
Men
Women
10 to 17
18 and over
10 to 17
18 and over
Violence Against the Person
113.6
597.9
39.8
120.4
Sexual
10.4
42.9
0.2
1.0
Robbery
33.9
36.2
3.1
1.8
Burglary
152.7
362.9
8.5
16.5
Offences Against Vehicles
138.3
335.4
6.8
14.4
Shoplifting
26.9
170.3
29.3
81.3
Other Theft (not shoplifting)
152.6
440.9
29.1
106.9
Fraud and Forgery
7.6
108.3
2.8
33.7
Criminal Damage
184.2
524.1
31.9
66.5
Drug Offences
29.0
183.6
2.1
20.3
Other Miscellaneous
7.9
55.0
1.1
6.1
Total Notifiable
857.1
2,857.6
154.8
469.1
Note: The number of police recorded crimes by gender do not add up to the totals given in Table A.4 due to missing data on gender. 

Research Report 64	
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17
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank all those who have 
contributed to the analysis while working in the Crime 
and Policing Analysis Unit at the Home Office, especially 
Geraldine Brown, Samantha Cherry-Downes, Emma 
Sutton and Maria Willoughby.
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