20,000 violent attacks by boozy teenage girls

Violent crimes by girls have shot to a new high, shocking figures reveal this week.

Teenage girls under 17 were behind more than 20,000 violent attacks in England and Wales last year – more than treble the 6,000 offences in 2001.

The alarming statistic comes in research for the Government-backed Youth Justice Board, which aims to tackle crime among young people. According to details leaked to the Sunday Mirror, one in three girls aged 15 or 16 admit to binge-drinking at least once in the last year.

Overall, the number of teenage girls who broke the law last year is down. But the number of violent crimes they committed soared to more than 20,000, according to a Home Office source. The incidents ranged from street brawls to murder.

A senior Whitehall source said: “The number of teenage girls breaking the law is down overall, but we are determined to do more to tackle violence and binge-drinking.”

According to the polling carried out by MORI for the Youth Justice Board, almost a third of the young people quizzed admitted carrying a knife or a gun in the last year. The most common weapon was a penknife. But some teenagers admitted carrying flick-knives or kitchen knives.

The number carrying weapons rose among those permanently or temporarily kicked out of school.

Sixty per cent of those said they had carried a knife or a gun in the past 12 months – with half of them claiming they needed a weapon “for protection”.