Figures reveal hundreds of pensioners wanted for crimes

Feb 28 2010 by Coreena Ford, Sunday Sun

HUNDREDS of pensioners have been arrested for a raft of serious crimes including murder, rape and drugs trafficking, the Sunday Sun can reveal.

We have learned there were more than 600 over 65s suspected of causing criminal havoc across the North over the last two years.

The figures were uncovered using the Freedom of Information Act after we asked all five North police forces to tell us how many pensioners had been arrested on suspicion of carrying out violent, sex or drugs crimes over the last two years.

And among the 633 arrested between January 2008 and December 2009 were OAPs accused of murder, rape, incest, threats to kill, child cruelty, causing death by careless driving, racially aggravated harassment and all manner of other serious offences.

Crime among the elderly appears to be on the rise too - in 2008 there were 293 arrests and that number jumped by 16% to 340 last year. In all over the two years, 371 were quizzed over violence against the person crimes, 253 for sex crimes and 26 for drugs offences.

The worst offenders were in the more rural forces of North Yorkshire and Cumbria, which recorded the highest numbers of arrests. The Northumbria and Cleveland Police force areas were the only ones which saw a drop in crime levels among pensioners.

But the figures – and the long list of crimes – came as no surprise to Lord Brian MacKenzie of Framwellgate. The Labour peer, former chief superintendent with Durham Constabulary and a former president of the Police Superintendents’ Association, said: “I am not surprised. It is often said that today’s 60 is yesterday’s 40.

“People are living longer, by 10 to 20 years, and therefore you could expect criminality to continue longer.

“People do not grow out of criminality and become ‘good citizens’. Ill health and death normally slows them down and stops them in the latter.

“We are talking of a very small percentage of the population here and the courts must make it clear that a serious crime has consequences for the victim whether committed by an older person or not.” He said: “The sentence therefore should reflect the damage caused and not the age of the perpetrator.”