Missing a puzzle piece...

More than 2,000 ten to 17-year-olds are convicted of attacking an officer every year after the problem increased by almost half in five years.

The statistics were unearthed from Ministry of Justice documents by the Conservatives and are a blow to the Government's reputation on law and order.

Figures show some 2,186 ten to 17 year-olds were guilty of assaulting a police officer in 2007 - the most recent data - and 272 of those were committed by children aged 14 or under.

The total was a 44 per cent increase on the 1,518 youngsters guilty of police assault in 2002.

However, only 54 were given a detention order while 1,163 were handed a community order.

Gosh...I'd sure like to know the family lineage percentages of these underage United Kingdom offenders. At first, I had no such interest. But, then I saw that only 54 of 1,217 offenders received detention. You know..."kid gloves so as not to offend" seemed to be the remedy here. That implies...