Nearly 17 percent of the filed cases of duty crime in the past 5 years were related to young people under the age of 35, according to the municipal procuratorate in southwest China's Chongqing municipality.

The procuratorate revealed this figure to local newspaper Chongqing Evening News on Tuesday. From 2003 to 2007, the procuratorate in Chongqing investigated 623 suspects under the age of 35, accounting for 16.69 percent of all the suspects for duty crime; while suspects above the age of 55 accounted for only 8.49 percent for the same period.

Over 82 percent of those 623 young suspects were investigated for bribery, embezzlement and misappropriation of public funds.

These figures show some new features of crime population distribution, that crime rates of youth are increasing rapidly, said the report.

Traditionally, people above the age of 55 are called high risk group for duty crime, for some of them probably want to commit crimes before retirement for they won't miss the last chance to exchange power for money.

Most of these young suspects worked in more lucrative industries such as financial services, land requisition and state-owned enterprises.

The sum of these cases is also large. Among the 5 cases investigated by the procuratorate in Changshou District in Chongqing, involving one million yuan each, three cases were committed by people under the age of 35, according to the report.

The procuratorate said these young people were misled by distorted values. They spent large amount of money on gambling, buying luxuries and treating friends. The lack of measures to prevent crimes also gave them more opportunities to commit crime.

(CRI April 9, 2008)