16.5% of teens prosecuted in 2022 are from disadvantaged backgrounds

Only 16.5% of adolescents accused in cases pending by the Investigative Committee (IC) were registered as disadvantaged – or their families were registered as such. This follows from the official data of the UK, which Vedomosti got acquainted with.

In total, 10,843 minors aged 14 years and older became accused in criminal cases in the production of the department in 2022, when criminal liability arises for crimes. Of these, one in four was under the age of 16.

More than 4,700 juveniles who came into the focus of attention of law enforcement officers have not reached the age of criminal responsibility.

According to the UK, 22% of juvenile delinquents are from an incomplete family, only 8% have both or only parents unemployed, 4% have parents or relatives with a criminal record. 6% of teenagers were under the influence of alcohol at the time of the crime. There are even those who committed a crime together with an adult family member.

In one group, the SC unites adolescents who committed a crime for the first time, were not on preventive records, and their families were not recorded as dysfunctional (31%). At the same time, 5% of these adolescents had an established mental or behavioral disorder, about 10% committed a crime while intoxicated.

“The most significant characteristic of juvenile crimes, including those that have not previously come to the attention of prevention agencies and institutions, is their commission in a group predominantly consisting of other minors,” the UK explained to Vedomosti.

In January, at an operational meeting of the Investigative Committee, Bastrykin, who was quoted by Rossiyskaya Gazeta, demanded that his subordinates on the ground seek disciplinary action against officials if they did not take care of children, and in cases under investigation, it was imperative to demand the elimination of the conditions that contributed to the commission of crimes by minors. In 2022, 3,763 officials were held accountable based on relevant submissions.

Bastrykin also urged investigators to cooperate more actively with the police, social services and educational institutions. According to the head of the IC, for effective prevention it is necessary to identify adolescents who need help and behavior correction, protect them from negative information on the Internet and teach them to reject destructive ideologies – religious, political, nationalistic and criminal.

Now there is an extraordinary rise in latent childhood aggression and complex destructive behavior, says Alexander Asmolov, head of the Department of Personality Psychology at Moscow State University, academician of the Russian Academy of Education. “First of all, this is a response to an extremely aggressive external environment, the world of adults,” the expert argues. – But the second key problem is the lack of even elementary forms of diagnosing dangerous manifestations. As a result, we get a classic situation when seven nannies have a child without an eye. The structures responsible for prevention are not equipped with professional craftsmen.”

According to Asmolov, the number of well-trained specialists in the environment of social protection and guardianship is falling, and the training of the teaching staff “leaves much to be desired.” “If a society loses at the stage of early education, when the child’s attitude to the world is determined, it turns out to be absolutely defenseless against its future manifestations,” he says.

Accounting for minors who are prone to commit offenses or who have committed them, as well as those living in dysfunctional families, is handled by the specialized divisions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, says lawyer Dmitry Gorbunov, partner at Rustam Kurmaev and Partners. These units include the Inspectorate for Juvenile Affairs, district commissioners and operational officers of the criminal investigation department, who “on the ground” are engaged in the detection and suppression of crimes.

“The main forms of preventive work are personal work with potential offenders in order to influence them of an educational nature and work to eliminate the conditions that contribute to the non-commission of offenses by minors,” the lawyer says. “These are preventive conversations, creating conditions for involving teenagers in sports, socially useful work, and the like.”

In addition to registration in the Ministry of Internal Affairs for minors at risk, there are other types of preventive registrations, adds lawyer Anastasia Kucherena, managing partner of Key Consulting Group. Among them are regional commissions for minors and the protection of their rights, the reason for registration in which are offenses, antisocial actions, neglect. There is an intra-school record of those who systematically violate the charter, have learning problems and deviant behavior.

In addition, there is registration with the guardianship and guardianship authorities, where they track, in particular, orphans. The order of preventive work is regulated by the regulatory legal acts of the regions and may differ, Kucherena specifies.

According to her, the main forms of work to identify family troubles are obtaining information from citizens’ appeals, raids and consideration of materials at meetings of commissions on juvenile affairs. This is followed by the identification of families in which parents do not fulfill the duties of upbringing, abuse alcohol or drugs. This is followed by an assessment of the standard of living of the minor and the degree of threat to him. After that, social workers should organize individual socio-psychological work with children, and, if necessary, patronage over the family.