China lowers the age of prosecution to 12 as youth crime rocks headlines—will it make any difference? 如何拯救“隐秘角落”里的少年？
On the evening of October 29, 2020, after dinner and alcohol at a restaurant in the small city of Xingping, Shaanxi province, six teenagers got into a fight with a 15-year-old peer who had allegedly blocked them as contacts on messaging app WeChat. Knocked unconscious, the boy was hidden in a hotel by the gang, wary of drawing attention to their fight. But by morning he was dead.The brutality of the teenagers’ violence was only exacerbated by their apparent eagerness to cover it up. The panicked culprits buried their victim in a field outside a nearby village, then took his SIM card and posted a photo on the boy’s social media captioned “Off to work!” to give the impression he was still alive. Police found the body nonetheless, and by the following week had taken the six suspects into custody.The suspects’ ages ranged from 14 to 17, meaning that none of them will face the same punishment an adult would for the same crime. They could, however, face juvenile charges under China’s Criminal Law, which was revised in December 2020 to reduce the age of criminal responsibility for serious crimes (like homicide) from 14 to 12 after a string of shocking juvenile cases hit the Chinese headlines over the past five years.In May of last year, a 15-year-old from Shandong province strangled her lawyer mother to death, allegedly because she was too strict. In November 2018, six teens aged 14 to 17 from Shaanxi were arrested for forcing a 15-year-old girl into prostitution, then killing her and burying the body. In 2019, a 10-year-old girl was killed by a 13-year-old boy; and in 2015, three students in Hunan gagged and beat their teacher to death in her own home.This apparent crisis of youth morality and discipline has even influenced popular culture. Last summer, the wildly popular TV series The Bad Kids (《隐秘的角落》) enraptured audiences with its plot of three children from broken homes who get mixed up in murder, blackmail, and extortion.According to a report by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate released in June 2020, China prosecuted 61,295 children under 18 in 2019, compared with 58,307 the year before. Between 2014 and 2019 the most common juvenile crimes were burglary and robbery, fighting in public, and “picking quarrels.” Although violent crime has fallen overall in the period, there have been more prosecutions for rape and sexual assault among minors. The vast majority of youth offenders—perhaps over 95 percent—are boys.Theft is the most common offense by juveniles, but there has been a rise in prosecutions for sexual assault among young offenders (VCG)
But these figures might not tell the whole story, as not all juvenile offenders are prosecuted. The legal system officially favors education over punishment when it comes to minors. Court records show that the number of convicted juveniles actually dropped from 88,891 in 2008 to 35,743 in 2016, but other metrics indicate that violent crimes among youth are on the rise, while the average age of prosecuted youth criminals is falling.The true state of underage crime in China may be difficult to discern, but in media headlines it is more common than ever. Violent and sensational stories are provoking furious reactions online, leading to calls from law-enforcement and lawyers for stricter consequences for youngsters who break the law.Zhang Huimin, a public security officer in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, is clear where the blame lies for such shocking acts. “These children’s actions can’t be separated from their parents,” says Zhang, who has worked as a criminal investigator since 2009.
Most of the juvenile cases Zhang deals with are petty acts of fighting or pickpocketing, but nearly all the offenders—rich or poor, rural or urban, locals or migrants—have one thing in common: They lack attention from their parents or guardians. “Most of the kids have extremely bad relationships with their parents, especially with their father,” she says. “Their parents might as well be dead...”
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