Youth Crime
Children, risk and crime: the On Track Youth Lifestyles Surveys
As part of the National Evaluation of the On Track programme, school surveys were conducted amongst children from On Track areas, to measure programmes effectiveness.
Title: Children, risk and crime: the On Track Youth Lifestyles Surveys
Author: Derrick Armstrong, Jean Hine, Sue Hacking, Remos Armaos, Roy Jones, Nicolai Klessinger, Alan France
Series: Home Office Research Study 278
Date published: January 2005
Number of pages: 124
Availability: Download full report 
PDF 602.2KB
There are 24 On track areas. These are high deprivation, high crime areas within England and Wales. In total self-reported data was collected from over 30,000 young people, aged 7-16, relating to their experiences of family, schools, neighbourhoods, and friendship groups, together with details of their involvement in a range of problem behaviours
Key findings
Overall, 52% of Secondary School children in these On Track areas reported involvement in offending in the last 12 months (55% of boys and 49% of girls).
The most commonly reported types of offending were vandalism, stealing and receiving stolen goods.
Girls (32%) were as likely to commit acts of vandalism as boys (33%) and there was only a small difference in the proportion of boys (29%) reporting stealing compared with girls (25%).
Three-quarters of children reported that drugs were moderately or easily available within their communities.
Problem behaviours
To identify the extent of young people's involvement in problem behaviour combinations of 9 problem behaviours were considered: alcohol use, smoking, substance abuse, stealing, receiving stolen property, attacking somebody, carrying a knife, vandalism and truancy from school.
Substance use
Alcohol use was common amongst all groups (61% overall) except children of Pakistani background (3%)
Smoking was more common among girls (19%) than boys (12%)
Drug use was significantly higher among older children (24% of year 10/11) and children of Mixed Black/White background (21%).
Stealing and receiving stolen property
The number of children who claim to have stolen in the last 12 months rose with age (19% in year 7 compared to 34% in year 10/11).
39% of the Mixed Black/White group reported stealing in the last 12 months compared to 12% of the Asian group.
Nearly double the number of children who were 'looked after' (42%) had stolen compared to those living with two birth parents (23%).
Girls were almost as likely to steal as boys (25% of girls compared to 29% of boys).
Self-reports suggest young people were less likely to be involved in receiving stolen property than stealing.
Attacking someone
14% reported attacking someone with the intention of hurting them in the last 12 months.
Boys (19%) were more than twice as likely as girls (8%) to say that they had attacked someone in the last 12 months.
Reports of attacking someone increased with age.
There were also differences between ethnic groups (e.g. 10% and 13% of Indian and Pakistani children respectively reported an attack on another person compared to 18% of Bangladeshi children).
21% of 'looked after' children reported attacking someone.
Carrying a knife
15% of boys had carried a knife to school in the last 12 months compared with 4% of girls.
The percentage of children carrying a knife to school almost doubles between year seven (6%) and year ten/eleven (12%).
A much higher proportion of 'looked after' children (21%) reported carrying a knife to school than children in other family types.
Vandalism
Girls (32%) were as likely to commit acts of vandalism as boys (33%).
Vandalism increased considerably with age (from 20% of children in year 7 to 40% in year 10/11).
40% of the Mixed Black/White group reported having vandalised property, double that reported by the Asian group.
Exclusion from school and truancy
Boys (17%) were twice as likely as girls (8%) to have been excluded from secondary school during the last 12 months.
20% of Black and 20% of Mixed Black/White reported exclusion from school compared to 12% of White children.
32% of 'looked after' children reported being excluded from their secondary school.
There was little difference between secondary school girls (16%) and boys (18%) reporting truancy during the last 4 weeks, although boys were much more likely to truant than girls at primary school.
A much higher proportion of children from the Mixed Black/White group (23%) had truanted in the last 4 weeks than children from other ethnic groups.
You can read more about risk factors by downloading the full report below.
Last update: Wednesday, September 17, 2008