Guangzhou sees decline in juvenile delinquency rate

The rate of juvenile delinquency has been witnessing a reduction with each passing year in prosperous Guangdong province, a window into China's reform and opening-up.

According to The White Paper on Juvenile Prosecution in Guangdong Province, procuratorates at all levels in the province handled a total of 4,006 cases, involving in 6,282 juvenile delinquents, in 2018.

"The number of cases involving juvenile delinquencies represented only 3.56 percent of the province's total, while procuratorial departments prosecuted a total of 4,499 juvenile delinquents last year," said the white paper which was released by Guangdong High People's Procuratorate on Tuesday.

The number of cases involving juvenile delinquencies that procuratorates in the entire province had handled last year saw a year-on-year reduction of 9.93 percent and 11.3 percent respectively when compared with figures recorded in 2017 and 2016, said the white paper.

"And the number of juvenile defendants that used to account for 3.5 percent of the province's total three years ago had reduced to represent 2.73 percent in 2018," said the white paper.

Of last year's juvenile delinquents brought to courts for trials, 90.81 percent were sentenced to less than three years in prisons, while 7.46 percent were sentenced to serve a jail term between three and 10 years.

Only 0.77 percent of juvenile delinquents were sentenced to a decade, or more, in prisons.

More than 61 percent of juvenile delinquents were prosecuted last year in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Foshan, Zhongshan, Huizhou, Dongguan, Zhuhai, Jiangmen and Zhaoqing in the prosperous Pearl River Delta which borders Hong Kong and Macao.

Most of Guangdong's juvenile delinquents were sentenced to serve their jail terms after mainly committing theft, robberies and intentional assaults in the previous year.

Meanwhile, the province prosecuted last year a total of 1,976 juvenile delinquents who came from outside Guangdong, accounting for 43.92 percent of the total. The figure was 41.68 percent in 2017.