LONDON, Sept 2: Children under the age of 10 who are too young to be prosecuted were the chief suspects in nearly 3,000 crimes committed in England and Wales last year, official figures showed on Sunday.

Of the 2,840 crimes, nearly half — around 1,300 — related to criminal damage or arson, the figures from three-quarters of England and Wales’s police forces released under freedom of information laws to BBC radio said.

In England and Wales, children aged under 10 cannot be charged with any offence, although the incidents are recorded by police.

A total of 5.5 million crimes by people of all ages were reported to police in the same period, Home Office figures showed.

Ian Johnston, head of the British Transport Police and a representative of the Association of Chief Police Officers’, said that many of the offences were “minor acts of damage”.

Lawrence Lee, a lawyer for one of two 10-year-olds convicted of murdering two-year-old James Bulger in a 1993 crime which sent shockwaves across Britain, said that lowering the age of criminal responsibility could be wise.

“As a defence lawyer I would say no, it wouldn’t be a good thing,” he said.

“But if I wear my citizen’s hat, I would say if you go along to any estate and see the age of kids marauding around like a pack of wolves, you’d see that reducing the age of criminal responsibility to eight or nine would be vital.”—AFP