Just 10% of accused juvenile offenders detained

WHILE more than 3,200 young people appeared before the Children’s Court in 2009 accused of committing in excess of 8,400 crimes, just under 300 received a custodial sentence.

Reacting to the figures, published for the first time today as part of an Irish Examiner special investigation, a member of Dublin’s joint policing committee has suggested communities throughout Ireland are living in fear of increasingly violent juvenile crime.

It has also emerged that the joint policing committee and the city’s north west area committee recently wrote to the Department of Justice requesting a review of what it perceives to be too lenient sentences for young offenders.