How many children are in gangs? The data’s not good enough to know
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In brief.
By Joël Reland
Claim
More than 30,000 children aged between 10 and 15 now say they are in gangs.
‘More than 30,000 children aged between 10 and 15 now say that they are in gangs, according to research that will fuel concerns about the country’s violent crime epidemic.’
– The Times, 25 June 2018
The 30,000 estimate has significant limitations, and cannot be fairly used to draw a link to a supposed rising crime epidemic.
The figure of 30,000 children comes from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner. It produced this estimate in a 2017 study, using data from 2013/14 from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which reported that 0.9% of 10–15-year-olds it surveyed in England and Wales described themselves as being in a street gang.
But this figure is subject to significant uncertainty, as the Office of the Children’s Commissioner noted at the time. The survey didn’t include children who are detained, ‘missing’, or living in health and care residential establishments,...
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