With the number of juvenile criminals increasing from 33,000 in
1998 to an estimated 80,000 this year, juvenile crime in China has
become a "grave" problem, experts said.
Two-thirds of the 4 million criminal cases annually handled by
courts involved juveniles suspects, according to data presented at
a seminar on juvenile crimes and judicial justice in Beijing
yesterday.
"Crimes committed by youngsters have been causing a growing
amount of severe social damage," deputy secretary-general with the
Chinese Society of Juvenile Delinquency Research Liu Guiming said
at the seminar.
"Offenders' average ages have become younger, and they are
committing new types of crime and forming larger gangs. They even
commit crimes without specific motives, often without
forethought."
Some of the most common crimes are robbery, theft, intentional
injury, rape, gang fighting, and provoking fights and quarrels.
But last year, the number of crime categories grew 22 percent
from 2005 to more than 150 types, as offences including new forms
of fraud and gang-related Internet crimes were added to the law
books.
Liu attributed the increase in crime to "the influence of broken
families, the depletion of school education and incomplete social
management".
The growing number of migrant workers' children who are left at
home, the growing number of youths infatuated with unhealthy
websites and campus violence have all become urgent social
problems.
Shang Xiuyun, a judge specializing in juvenile crime from
Haidian District People's Court in Beijing, said research by her
court found 59 percent of underage criminals come from broken
families, and they usually experience indifference in personal
relationships and even endure domestic violence.
"With major social transformations under way, children nowadays,
who are usually single children, endure more pressure and pain,
even though they are called 'emperors' and 'empresses' of the
families, compared with when there were several children in each
family in the past," Shang told China Daily.
According to the Chinese Law on Prevention of Juvenile
Delinquency, the Juvenile Protection Law and relevant judicial
interpretations by the Supreme People's Court, juvenile criminal
cases are subject to only a few special policies, such as ensuring
closed trials and protection from capital punishment sentences.
To better protect juvenile rights, experts called for the
establishment of substantive and procedural laws dealing with
juvenile delinquency.
"Without such laws, it is meaningless to talk about judicial
justice for the youth," Chen Ruihua, a renowned professor in
criminal law with Peking University, said.
(China Daily December 5, 2007)