129,000 only get a warning

Police have handed out 129,000 cautions to yob youths in just two years, shocking new figures show.

The warnings given to under-16s meant hundreds escaped prosecution for serious offences including rape, drug trafficking and wounding.

Cautions were introduced 10 years ago in a bid to rehabilitate kids by rep-rimanding rather than caging them. But figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show police all over the country are now battling a rising tide of youth crime - despite the Government's £100million Youth Crime Action plan funding extra cop patrols in 69 "priority areas".

The highest number of cautions were issued by the biggest force in Britain, London's Metropolitan Police, which gave out a total of 18,203 between 2007 and 2009.

Burglaries
The West Midlands force dealt with 7,203 kids by using cautions over the same period. Essex and Greater Manchester police each issued more than 5,000 while cops covering Devon and Cornwall handed out over 4.000. Then Humberside and North Wales forces both gave out more than 2,000.

Five forces said they had given cautions for sex crimes but thousands of burglaries, thefts, assaults and frauds were dealt with in the same way.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman insisted that because dealing with children was difficult and challenging, "the best outcome is not always achieved through a criminal prosecution".

And the Children's Society said: "Sending children to prison should only be an absolutely last resort."

But justice campaigner John Johnson, whose brother Kevin was murdered in Sunderland by youths he asked to keep quiet, said: "Those boys had all been in trouble with the police before and all they'd got were cautions, which were little more than a slap on the wrist."