Youth cautions
Published
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1. Main facts and figures
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in 2015/16, police issued cautions to young people on 18,048 occasions, and the ethnicity of the young person who was cautioned was recorded for 16,613 of them (92%)
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in 2015/16, White young people received cautions on 14,269 occasions, which is 86% of all instances where ethnicity was recorded
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in 2015/16, police gave youth cautions on 1,545 occasions to Black young people, which is 9% of all instances where ethnicity was recorded
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from 2005/06 to 2015/16, the total number of instances given fell by 85% (from 122,300 to 18,048), but the relative proportion by ethnicity stayed broadly the same, with a slight decrease in White young people (from 90% to 86%) and a slight increase in Black young people (from 6% to 9%) over that period
Things you need to know
Before 8 April 2013, police gave reprimands and final warnings to young people aged 10 to 17, but they were replaced on that date with youth cautions and youth conditional cautions. In this data, reprimands, final warnings and youth conditional cautions are all treated as though they were youth cautions.
If a young person is cautioned for 2 or more offences at the same time, the police officer will record all offences in the Police National Computer (PNC), with the most serious offence as the 'principal' offence. This is the offence presented here.
The total figures for occasions include young people whose ethnicity is not recorded in the PNC. However, in every time period reported in this data, ethnicity has been recorded for at least 92% of cautions.
Ethnicity is identified and recorded by the police officer giving the caution, based on appearance, and is not self-defined by the young person. Ethnicity has been consistently recorded in 4 broad categories: White, Black, Asian and Other (including Chinese).
What the data measures
This data measures the number of occasions where a youth caution was given to young people aged 10 to 17.
The figures are taken from the Police National Computer (PNC). The PNC holds details of all convictions and cautions given for ‘recordable offences’. A recordable offence is an offence that the law says must be recorded on the PNC. It includes some offences where it is not possible for offenders to be sentenced to prison or other custody, and it excludes motoring offences.
Ethnicity is identified and recorded by the police officer giving the caution.
The ethnic categories used in this data
The analysis used the following 4 broad ethnic categories:
- Asian
- Black
- White
- Other (which includes Chinese and other ethnic groups)
Ethnicity is identified and recorded by the police officer giving the caution based on the appearance of the young person being cautioned, rather than the individual reporting their own ethnicity, as is usually the case.
2. Young people given youth cautions by ethnicity
| Asian | Black | White | Other | Unknown | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Asian % | Asian Number | Black % | Black Number | White % | White Number | Other % | Other Number | Unknown % | Unknown Number |
| 2005/06 | 3.6 | 4,216 | 5.9 | 6,820 | 89.7 | 104,147 | 0.8 | 927 | *N/A | 6,172 |
| 2006/07 | 3.7 | 4,578 | 6.1 | 7,569 | 89.1 | 109,818 | 1.0 | 1,284 | *N/A | 8,411 |
| 2007/08 | 3.8 | 4,314 | 6.3 | 7,081 | 88.9 | 100,552 | 1.0 | 1,154 | *N/A | 7,157 |
| 2008/09 | 4.3 | 3,775 | 6.6 | 5,867 | 88.0 | 78,124 | 1.2 | 1,040 | *N/A | 4,850 |
| 2009/10 | 4.2 | 2,812 | 6.7 | 4,484 | 87.8 | 58,689 | 1.3 | 839 | *N/A | 3,910 |
| 2010/11 | 4.1 | 1,977 | 7.1 | 3,429 | 87.6 | 42,484 | 1.2 | 593 | *N/A | 2,131 |
| 2011/12 | 4.0 | 1,649 | 7.2 | 2,940 | 88.0 | 36,061 | 0.8 | 315 | *N/A | 1,248 |
| 2012/13 | 3.8 | 1,157 | 7.2 | 2,179 | 88.2 | 26,626 | 0.8 | 233 | *N/A | 1,056 |
| 2013/14 | 3.8 | 998 | 7.4 | 1,930 | 88.0 | 22,872 | 0.7 | 190 | *N/A | 1,025 |
| 2014/15 | 4.2 | 866 | 8.8 | 1,809 | 86.3 | 17,719 | 0.7 | 137 | *N/A | 1,210 |
| 2015/16 | 4.2 | 706 | 9.3 | 1,545 | 85.9 | 14,269 | 0.6 | 93 | *N/A | 1,435 |
Download table data for ‘Young people given youth cautions by ethnicity’ (CSV) Source data for ‘Young people given youth cautions by ethnicity’ (CSV)
Summary of Youth cautions Young people given youth cautions by ethnicity Summary
This data shows that:
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in 2015/16, police gave youth cautions to White young people on 14,269 occasions, which is 86% of all youth cautions where ethnicity was recorded
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in 2015/16, police gave youth cautions to Black young people on 1,545 occasions, which is just over 9% of all youth cautions where ethnicity was recorded
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from 2005/06 to 2015/16, the total number of incidents where cautions were issued fell by 85%, from 122,282 to 18,048 cautions
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from 2005/06 to 2015/16, the proportion of incidents by ethnicity stayed broadly the same, with only a slight decrease in White young people (from 90% in 2005/06 to 86% in 2015/16) and a slight increase in Black young people (from 6% to 9%)
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from 2005/06 to 2015/16, the proportion of incidents where young people from Asian and Other ethnicities received a caution stayed relatively constant
3. Methodology
The figures are taken from the Police National Computer (PNC). The PNC holds details of all convictions and cautions given for ‘recordable offences’. A recordable offence is an offence that the law says must be recorded on the PNC. It includes some offences where it is not possible for offenders to be sentenced to prison or other custody, and it excludes motoring offences.
The PNC may be subject to some error arising from data entry and processing. The data for January to March 2016 is provisional and may change.
Admin data sources reported as recorded. As with all large administrative data sources, some inherent inaccuracy may exist.
Suppression rules and disclosure control
None required
Related publications
Further technical information
4. Data sources
Source
Type of data
Administrative data
Type of statistic
National Statistics
Publisher
Ministry of Justice
Publication frequency
Yearly
Purpose of data source
Youth justice data is used by the government to develop, monitor and evaluate criminal justice policy for young offenders. It reports on activity in the criminal justice system for England and Wales, giving information for the latest year and also longer-term trends.
5. Download the data
This file contains the following: ethnicity, year, and value