Juvenile crime now accounts for one third of all crime in China, with migrant youths being the main perpetrators, new figures from the Supreme People’s Court show. In Guangdong, which hosts nearly half of all China’s migrant workers, juvenile crime has increased 18 percent year on year since 2003, to reach 18,633 offenders in 2007, or 47 percent of all offenders in the province.
The figures highlight the failure of China’s social welfare system to adequately care for migrant workers and their children. Court officials openly acknowledge that a lack of parental supervision caused by long working hours, and the social and educational exclusion faced by migrant children are major factors in their turning to crime.
As CLB has pointed out in its study of migrant workers’ children, the second generation of migrants, who are statistically more likely to offend than their parents, often grew up in poor housing, had inadequate schooling and medical care, and suffered daily discrimination. Moreover, they were more likely to compare their quality of life with their urban counterparts than their parents’ home village, leading to a greater sense of resentment and dissatisfaction.
Migrant juvenile crime is now an increasingly serious problem in China. Migrant youths accounted for 87 percent and 80 percent of all juvenile offences in Suzhou and Wuxi respectively in 2007, a senior court official in Jiangsu told the China Daily. And in Haishu district in Ningbo, 95 percent of juvenile crime was committed by migrants.
Moreover, as CLB noted in its study, migrant children are increasingly becoming the victims as well as the perpetrators of crime. It is essential, therefore, that local governments with high concentrations of migrants, intensify their efforts to improve the lives of migrant workers and their children before the social problems engendered by the country’s archaic household registration (hukou) system become even more serious.