Young Russians Committing Fewer Crimes but More Violent Ones, Officials Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 16 – The overall crime rate among younger Russians has fallen in recent years, Anna Kuznetsova, the plenipotentiary for children’s rights says; but over the last year, there has been “a more than five percent” increase in the number of especially serious crimes carried out by young people (interfax.ru/russia/654095).

            Moreover, she says, “every fifth child who commits a crime, had already come to the attention of law-enforcement organs,” an indication of the failure of the system to prevent recidivism; and a quarter of these young and violent criminals were neither studying nor working at the time they committed their crimes, a measure of serious social and economic problems.

            Her remarks amplify those of Tatyana Moskalkova, the plenipotentiary for human rights, last November. At that time, Moskalkova said that “statistics do not show that crime by children is growing quantitatively, but it is changing qualitatively and becoming crueler and more heartless. This, of course, is the product of the influence of the surrounding environment.”

            According to her, “technical progress has given people enormous opportunities for intellectual growth but it has also brought temptations for which they are not prepared.”  She called on the government to provide more jobs and educational opportunities to combat this rise in serious crime among young Russians.