State comes second in thefts committed by juveniles

CHENNAI: Lack of intervention programmes to prevent at-risk youth from taking to a life of crime is reflected in Tamil Nadu’s numbers for juvenile offences in 2016.

With 667 theft cases, Tamil Nadu ranked second in the country (behind Maharashtra) in terms of juveniles caught committing petty crimes. This is 30% of total

juvenile crimes

recorded in Tamil Nadu and nearly onetenth of all theft cases in the country. There was a 22% increase in total juvenile crimes in the state from 1,814 (2015) to 2,217 (2016).

In Chennai, the number of juvenile crimes rose by 45%, from 270 in 2015 to 391in 2016. As many as 307 of the 391 cases (78.5%) in Chennai involved juvenile offenders caught stealing.

Police suggest that poor socio-economic condition is one of the primary reasons for juveniles attempting theft. “No one steals for luxury. In most juvenile theft cases I have handled, the cause happens to be sustaining day-to-day existence,” said P Sundaravadivel, deputy commissioner of police, Madras High Court security.

A pattern noticed when factoring in this observation is that, in Chennai, of the 485 juveniles penalised for various crimes in 2016, at least 43% dropped out of schools at some point below the matriculation (Class X) level. Around 37% offenders had completed primary schooling but another 20% were illiterate. Incidentally, 27% of the juvenile offenders in Chennai were also homeless.

But painting all children from disadvantaged communities in a negative shade is unacceptable, says

Vanessa Peter

, a city-based housing policy and social stigma researcher. “There is a lack of data specific for marginalised communities to suggest that children from these families alone resort to a life of crime. So, it is absolutely wrong to say offenders are likely to emerge from such communities as we end up criminalising them," she said.

What these patterns point to is the lack of targeted intervention for early adolescent period, she said, before adding that central government intervention programmes had

diversified targets

and were always executed in silos by the various departments. “A coordinated execution is absent,” she said.