The figures come as ministers prepare a major overhaul of the youth justice system amid growing concern over children being drawn into crime at an increasingly young age
Experts fear mobile phones and internet exposure may be behind the surge(Image: Getty Images)
Police “wrote off” thousands of crimes last year – including rapes, drug offences and violent assaults – because the culprits were aged under 10.
The revelation comes at the same time as the government is looking at the possibility of increasing the age of criminal responsibility to as high as 12, meaning even more offences will end up without the culprits being punished.
Experts fear mobile phones and internet exposure may be behind the surge in the numbers of children, aged under ten, finding themselves as the prime suspect in a criminal investigation.
Not only can these children use mobile technology to commit crimes but seeing violence and sex over the internet may be a trigger to their own offending.
The children, who are all of primary school age, cannot be prosecuted for any offences under our current legal system because they are deemed not to be criminally responsible for their actions.
Home Office figures show there were 11,031 offences marked by the police last year (2025) where no action was taken because the suspect was under the age of ten.
If the offence is serious social services may well be contacted to offer help to the child and their guardians, but the legal system means it is impossible to put the youngsters before a court.
The crime figures show that offending by these under tens dropped during the Covid lockdown first struck, but since then the numbers have increased sharply.
Last year’s figure of 11,031 offences was a rise of 15 percent on the 9,554 crimes logged in the previous 12 months and a 66 percent increase on the figure of 6,642 logged five years earlier in 2020.
Included in last year’s total were 6,110 offences of violence which included making death threats, stalking, attacks on police officers and racially motivated crimes.
There were also 1,850 sex crimes logged where the offender was recorded as being somebody under the age of ten. These included rapes, sexual assaults and crimes of indecent exposure.
In addition, there were 265 theft crimes last year and four drug offences linked to this youngest age group of offenders.
There were also arson, burglary, and racially motivated offences that police logged when the principal suspect was a child aged nine or younger.
There were two offences of kidnapping, one recorded in Nottinghamshire and the other in Bedfordshire, where police didn’t take anybody to court because the prime suspect was a child aged under ten.
The figures come as ministers prepare a major overhaul of the youth justice system amid growing concern over children being drawn into crime at an increasingly young age.
Justice Secretary David Lammy has announced plans to expand parenting orders, which can force parents and guardians to attend counselling sessions and address their child’s behaviour if youngsters become involved in offending.
On raising the age of criminal responsibility Mr Lammy said he would consider whether the current law “reflects modern understanding of childhood, vulnerability and development in today’s society.”
A new youth justice White Paper suggested there could be different ages of criminal responsibility for different offences, with the current threshold still applying for the most serious of crimes.
Kevin Moore, a retired Detective Chief Superintendent and former head of Sussex Police CID, said: “Criminalising under tens is not the answer in my view. However, we do need to take action because I believe it relates directly to poor parenting.
“Often, these children, because thats what they are, have no role models within their families and pretty much just do their own thing with no parental supervision.
“We need to be bold in the most serious cases and remove children from this environment and place them in care. Whilst this is expensive and controversial, there is no alternative.
Social services supervision within the same environment will solve nothing sadly.”
