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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 was recorded for 16,613 of them (92%)
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White young people received cautions on 14,269 occasions, and Black young people received 1,545 cautions (86% and 9% respectively of all instances where ethnicity was recorded)
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from 2005/06 to 2015/16, the total number of cautions given fell by 85% (from 122,300 to 18,048), but the relative percentage 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
From 8 April 2013, reprimands and final warnings were replaced with youth cautions and youth conditional cautions. This data treats reprimands, final warnings and youth conditional cautions as if they were youth cautions.
If a young person is cautioned for 2 or more offences at the same time, the data includes the most serious offence.
The total figures for occasions include young people whose ethnicity is not recorded in the Police National Computer. 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.
What the data measures
This data measures the number of occasions when youth cautions were given to young people aged 10 to 17 years.
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
Ethnicity is identified and recorded by the police officer giving the caution based on the appearance of the young person being cautioned, from the following 4 broad ethnic categories:
- Asian
- Black
- White
- Other ethnic groups (including Chinese)
2. Youth cautions by ethnicity over time
| 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 ‘Youth cautions by ethnicity over time’ (CSV) Source data for ‘Youth cautions by ethnicity over time’ (CSV)
Summary of Youth cautions Youth cautions by ethnicity over time Summary
This data shows that:
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in 2015/16, police gave youth cautions to White young people on 14,269 occasions (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 (over 9% of all youth cautions where ethnicity was recorded)
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from 2005/06 to 2015/16, the total number of cautions issued fell by 85% (from 122,282 to 18,048)
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over the same period, the percentage of cautions by ethnicity stayed broadly the same, with 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%) receiving cautions
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.
Rounding
Percentages are rounded to 1 decimal place.
Quality and methodology 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