Number of children arrested by police plunges by two thirds

‘Tens of thousands of children have a brighter future’

THE number of children being arrested in Leicestershire has plummeted by more than two thirds in less than a decade.

Youngsters aged 17 or below were arrested just 1,104 times in 2018.

That is down from 3,322 in 2010, according to figures obtained by the Howard League for Penal Reform.

It is a drop of 67 per cent in just eight years.

The data - from freedom of information requests to all police forces - shows the number has fallen nearly every year since 2010.

That was the year the Howard League launched a major campaign to reduce the criminalisation of children.

Only 2017 increase from

2016 to 1,129.

Academic research has shown that each contact a child has with the criminal saw 806 // an in justice system drags them deeper into it, leading to more crime.

Across England and Wales, arrests of children have been reduced by 72 per cent since 2010.

Data from more than 40 police forces show there were 70,078 arrests of boys and girls aged 17 and under in 2018, down from almost 250,000 in 2010.

Arrests of primary school-age children in particular fell from 616 in 2017 to 383 in 2018, a yearon-year drop of 38 per cent.

The number of children of all ages in custody has fallen by 63 per cent since the start of the decade, from 2,418 in 2010 to 894 in 2018.

Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: “Tens of thousands of children can look forward to a brighter future without their lives being blighted by police contact and a criminal record.

“Police forces up and down the country have diverted resources to preventing crime and making communities safer, and the Howard League is proud to have played its part in that transformation.

“Building on this success and reducing the number of arrests still further would allow even more children to thrive.”

The figures collected by the charity only go back as far as 2010, so we can’t say whether the number of children arrested was falling before that year.