More children aged 10 to 14-years-old are suspected of committing violent crime in London, a new report has found.
Metropolitan Police data shows 7,512 of them were accused of violence, including knife crime, in 2023 - a rise of 38 per cent in three years.
While this is below the 2019 figure, researchers highlight that those under 15 made up a higher percentage of serious offences involving young people in 2023, compared to 2019.
Lib Peck, director of London’s Violence Reduction Unit, said the “disturbing” study highlighted the importance of work aimed at tackling school absences and exclusions.
She told BBC London: “It’s something Londoners are concerned about, absolutely rightly so, and we see far too many young people get caught up in violence.”
The study, put together by crime and justice specialists Crest Advisory, said the number of permanent exclusions in inner London had fallen over five years, while increasing nationally, but the number of suspensions had increased across both inner and outer London.
It also said that young people with special educational needs were disproportionately represented in the youth justice system.
The report also recommended that the VRU should commission research into the exposure of children to online harm, including social media, as well as bad relationships with peers and adults.
It follows the release of hit Netflix series Adolescence earlier this year which sparked a national conversation about the impact of social media on young people.
The figures show that serious offences affecting under 25-year-olds initially fell during the pandemic, but increased in the years after.
In 2019, there were 56,734 serious offences involving those aged 24 and under, falling to 37,616 in 2021 and rising to 41,147 by 2023.
While in 2019, children aged 10-14 were involved in 15.9 per cent of those crimes, this had risen to 18.3 per cent in 2023.
In comparison, for those aged 15-18 the proportion fell from 47.8 per cent in 2019 to 43.5 per cent in 2023, and for 19-25-year-olds it rose from 36.3 per cent to 38.3 per cent in the same time period.
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