Grampian Police said offending in Moray had been reduced

The Scottish Executive statistics have shown that there is still a small number of hardcore young offenders.

However, the system of calculating offending has been challenged by Grampian Police and youth justice teams in Moray and Aberdeen.

They said offending had actually been significantly reduced.

Moray Council officials pointed out that even Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson had applauded their work.

They said that compared to five years ago, when the Lossiemouth and Elgin areas of Moray had an acknowledged youth crime problem, the levels of persistent youth crime had significantly dropped.

It is unfortunate that the figures released by the Scottish Executive do not reflect the situation on the ground Alan Smailes Grampian Police

The report has shown a 15% increase in the number of young offenders over two years, from 1,201 to 1,388.

There were 54 young people in Aberdeen in 2004/05 classed as persistent offenders, compared to 35 the previous year.

However, the Aberdeen Youth Justice Strategy Group said local analysis of the data showed that a significant number of young people who triggered the persistent offender criteria in 2003/04 were no longer considered persistent.

Moray also fared badly in the figures, with 33 persistent young offenders, up by 14 on the previous year.

Moray Council said reports submitted to the children's reporter by police often carried a number of offences attached to one person - a practice known as "rolling up".

As a result, the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration baseline figures showed an artificially low number of offenders to begin with.

This meant that despite the effectiveness of local programmes, the figures had shown a sharp increase from the starting point.

Gang statistics

The council quoted an example where a youth faced 85 charges, but was only recorded as one report, so had not registered on the baseline report as a persistent offender.

It also said a gang of young offenders from 2000/1 known as the "Lossie Crew" would not have shown up on the data but were the subject of a 55-page indictment containing 178 charges - the biggest in Scottish legal history.

John Carney, Moray Council's social work manager for children and families, said: "This anomaly means that the 16 names on the SCRA baseline did not include our most prolific, persistent offenders, despite there often being 20 to 30 reports attached to each one upon referral."