Thousands of crimes committed by serial offenders

Government figures reveal that 1,878 known troublemakers aged 10 to 17 were responsible for offences in the region in 2008.

Across England and Wales, 15,819 persistent young offenders committed 28,834 crimes during the year – despite high levels of Government funding to tackle teenage reoffending.

Ministers have been urged to rethink the system after researchers found the Government's drive to punish youths who break the law may actually have led to an increase in repeat offending.

Persistent young offenders were responsible for 3,430 offences in Yorkshire in 2008, including 1,581 in West Yorkshire alone.

Repeat offenders were also behind 688 crimes in South Yorkshire, 669 in the Humberside force area and 492 in North Yorkshire.

A persistent offender is defined by the Government as a young person aged 10 to 17 guilty of an offence on three or more separate occasions.

In September, Judge Jonathan Durham QC, sitting in Bradford, urged magistrates to send more reoffenders to crown courts after he sentenced three teenage robbers who had committed almost 70 offences between them.

And a panel of experts analysing youth crime in the UK has noted how reoffending rates "remain unimpressive" even though successive governments have invested heavily to tackle the problem.

The Independent Commission on Youth Crime and Antisocial Behaviour, due to report in the summer, has prepared a consultation paper which casts doubt over ministers' current strategies.

"At a time when public spending is coming under intense scrutiny, the value being achieved for the taxpayers' money is open to question," the paper stated. "On the face of it, responses absorbing the most resources appear to be among the least effective in preventing offending and reoffending."

The Government's approach was also criticised in a report by the left-leaning think-tank IPPR, which suggested the policy of getting tougher on young offenders "quite simply...has not worked".

Joe Farrington-Douglas and Lucia Durante, authors of the report Towards a Popular, Preventative Youth Justice System, said: "The threshold at which young people are drawn into the criminal justice system is now lower, which results in greater numbers being processed through police stations and courts, and also rising numbers in custody.

"This process is known to have some perverse effects. Arresting young people does not tend to stop them reoffending – in fact the reverse may be the case – and putting children in prison can be very damaging."

The report also accused the Government of setting targets which encouraged police to arrest more young people.

"While the overall figures make it look as if a higher proportion of crimes are being solved and offenders punished than before," the authors said, "the actuality is that the threshold for police to make an arrest has been lowered.

"Some police forces paid bonuses to officers for rearresting children as young as 11 years old."

PERSISTENT YOUNG OFFENDERS

Number of Number of

Persistent young offences

offenders committed

Humberside

365 669

North Yorkshire

250 492

South Yorkshire

388 688

West Yorkshire

875 1,581