NOVA.SCOTIA (CBC) - The number and rate of young people accused of homicide in 2006 were at their highest levels since data were first collected in 1961, Statistics Canada reported Friday.

The rates can fluctuate substantially from year to year, given the relatively small number of youngsters who kill, federal agency cautioned. Five years earlier, the youth homicide rate was at a 30-year low, it said.

In its latest report on youth crime, the agency counted 85 Canadians age 12 to 17 who were formally accused of killing someone in 2006. That translates into a rate of about three per 100,000 people in that age bracket, it said.

There is no question the rate was sharply higher - up 17 per cent from 2005 and 41 per cent from 1997 - and that youth violent crime in general was on the rise, StatsCan said.

Yet the rate of youth property crime in 2006 was at its lowest point in a decade. Much of the decline can be explained by falling numbers of break-ins and minor thefts, the criminal offences for which youth were most commonly arrested, it said.

In contrast, the youth violent crime rate was up 3 per cent from 2005, 12 per cent from 1997 and 31 per cent from 1991, defying a trend in adult crime. Canada's overall violent crime rate fell 4 per cent from 1997 to 2006, the agency said.

Youths accused of assault represented nearly 80 per cent of those apprehended for violent crimes in 2006. Most were accused of common assault, the least serious form of this offence. The Youth Criminal Justice Act came into force on April 1, 2003, replacing the Young Offenders Act. It requires police to consider non-court measures for youths accused of less serious offences before considering a charge. In compiling its figures, Statistics Canada counts such cases as well as those in which youths are formally charged or when police recommend they be charged.

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