Children as young as 10 and 12 are being arrested for criminal damage, being drunk and disorderly and possessing drugs in Kingston, new police figures show.

The figures came to light through a Freedom of Information request to the Metropolitan Police, which showed that 81 arrests on under 16s were made in the year to April.

Criminal damage was the biggest problem, with 63 arrests made, followed by possession of cannabis, for which 11 children were arrested.

Two children were found to be drunk and disorderly, the youngest being just 12 years old.

The youngest person to be arrested for criminal damage was 10 years old, barely over the age of criminal responsibility.

Since 2006, the number of youth arrests has dropped year on year for all crimes except drug dealing, which rose to three cases last year.

Of those, one was given a final warning and two saw no further action.

Acting Superintendent John Pendleton of Kingston police put many of the crimes down to a minority of youths and said a lot of time and money had been invested in giving youths things to do and positive role models.

He said: "Since we have rolled out safer neighbourhood teams across Kingston, our relationship with young people has massively improved.

"We don’t criminalise young people like we used to, we’ve got the time to spend on understanding their particular issues."

He added that young people were less likely to be routinely charged straight away.

He said: "There’s a lot we can do after the arrest to get the family engaged, like parenting classes.

"Dragging them through the courts isn’t the way to go."

Richard James, director of Kingston youth charity Oxygen, said Kingston town centre had seen aggressive behaviour from groups of youths some time ago but this had tailed off recently.

He suspected binge drinking was a bigger problem for children in Kingston than drugs.

He said: "It’s part of the town centre, which at night time is fuelled by alcohol and a pub and club atmosphere. Young people see that and that’s what they aspire to.

"Young people like being out and about, they don’t like being restricted to buildings. Quite often they can be moved on and told they can’t congregate here. It just causes a fractious environment.

"Young people can have an antisocial tendency. They just say, ‘in my boredom I’ll kick this door’, what happens is that door breaks and it’s criminal damage."

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