Youth Criminals: From Which Class Do They Come and What Does the Police Do Against Them‪?‬

First of all, there is not a lot of literature on this topic – and to be honest, I have not found anything about it in a library. When I went to the police department for the first time, I found some flyers and posters on a table right next to the entrance of the department. They gave some information on youth criminals, but it certainly was not enough for me. Above all, these flyers and posters gave information on things I already knew or I got to know at my first day at the department. What is really striking is that the information on the flyers strongly make one attentive that there is criminality among teenagers, but ironically one can only get the information in the police departments when it is obviously too late as you are already there.

Having searched on that table for interesting and “new” information for a while, I found a small brochure called “Was nun? Wenn Kinder und Jugendliche mit dem Gesetz in Konflikt geraten – Informationen für Eltern”. As this brochure does not provide all the information I needed, I had to ask a police officer for more material. And only after I had asked someone, did I get information and papers with statistics. These papers are not available for everybody. I will discuss these in turn.

The annual report gives a detailed representation of the different kinds of crime. First, it shows the development of criminal acts over the last five years, in general. It also separates male from female, German from foreign criminals and teenagers from young adults. One of the main parts is larceny. There are different ways of it, such as larceny in/from warehouses, cars or houses. Another part is the ‘youth specific‘ crime, such as property damage, bodily injury, blackmail, rape and crime at school. Other crimes, such as ill-treatment of protégés, killings, missed people and abuse of alcohol, are mentioned as well. There are very detailed statistics for all these crimes that compare the development of each of them over the past five years and comment on the ones who are most striking.