One in four children is a lawbreaker

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'Pressure? Most grown-ups don't know the meaning of the word'

Youth crime has reached a new record high, with one in four schoolchildren admitting that they have committed a crime in the past 12 months.

Nearly two thirds of pupils excluded from school have also been responsible for a crime, with expelled pupils committing an average of 44 offences in the past year.

The findings are to be published tomorrow by the Government's Youth Justice Board. They are based on research by Mori, which interviewed 5,167 school pupils and 577 excluded pupils between the age of 11 and 16 from across the country.

The figures will increase concerns about soaring crime levels among young people.

Last week, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, said that the Government's anti-crime initiatives would not work, including those aimed at young offenders.

There has been a dramatic rise in the number of excluded pupils handling stolen goods, which is linked to the rise in mobile phone theft. As many as 60 per cent admitted they had handled stolen goods, compared with 44 per cent last year.

Twenty-five per cent of all excluded children admitted having stolen mobile phones themselves, an increase of two per cent on last year. The number of children professing to have carried a weapon other than a gun also rose, from 50 per cent last year to 55 per cent in 2002.

The only crime where there has been a drop in youth offending is shoplifting. The number of pupils involved this year has fallen to 49 per cent from 58 per cent in 2001.

The Mori survey found that the average teenage offender is white and living in London, the North-East or the South-East. This contradicts studies that have found that most young offenders are black.

Lord Warner, chairman of the Youth Justice Board, said these crimes were carried out by a small but persistent group of offenders.

"It's easy to demonise all children, but what you've got is a relatively small group of persistent offenders," he said.

He added that young people were encouraged by adver-tisers to define their self-worth through material possessions, which was fuelling street crime.

"You can be like Kate Moss or David Beckham. Things like mobile phones are part of being someone who has made it in modern society for many of these kids. If they haven't got one, they feel inferior," he said.

Police and the courts were also to blame for failing to apprehend children and teenagers involved in crime and for failing to prosecute them even if they were arrested.

"Why did they get to 44 offences before they were caught? This comes down to the quality of evidence that the police and prosecutors put in front of the court. You can't duck out of that," he said.

However, Lord Warner said that initiatives such as parenting programmes had helped reduce teenage offending. An evaluation of 3,000 parents on these programmes showed that the average number of offences committed by their children had fallen from five to two or none.

Lord Warner said more young offenders were being punished. The Mori figures showed that the proportion of young offenders in mainstream education who are not punished after being caught for committing offences has fallen from 22 per cent last year to 16 per cent in 2002.

The Home Office minister Beverley Hughes said the Government was cracking down on youth crime.

"We are strengthening the punishments – including toughening up community sentences for the hard core of persistent offenders whose behaviour is out of control. But it also means working with children before they get to that stage," she said.

Police have blamed teenage gangs for the increase in mobile phone theft, which has seen street robberies rise by more than 18 per cent over the past year.

The Government has introduced a range of new measures aimed at teenage delinquents, including tagging 12- to 16-year-olds on bail. They are also considering removing child benefits from parents of tearaway children.