The number of crimes committed by teenagers in Shanghai's Jing'an District is on the rise, according to a survey conducted by prosecutors in the district. Prosecutors wouldn't say, however, how many crimes youngsters have committed, what percentage of crimes in the district they are responsible for, or how quickly the teen crime rate is growing.

Most of the young criminals come from broken families and many of the crimes are the result of young love, according to prosecutor Cai Sheng, who notes that most of the youngsters to appear in district courts already have a boyfriend or girlfriend.

He said the youngsters often commit crimes to impress their friends without thinking about the consequences. For example, young men often steal expensive clothes from shopping malls to give to their girlfriends as a gift, Cai said.

In a case that was tried recently, a teenage couple and two of their young friends, robbed a local woman in order to collect money to pay for an abortion. A 17-year-old girl surnamed Wu, and her boyfriend surnamed Bao, had both dropped out of school but neither of them had a job.

Wu found she was pregnant one day last May.

Neither her nor Bao had enough money to pay for an abortion.

Too scared to tell their parents, the young couple decided to steal some money and turned to another couple, surnamed Huang and Liang, for help. Early on the morning of May 8, 2004, the four teenagers robbed a woman of 500 yuan (US$60) in cash and a mobile phone worth 700 yuan. But before they made it to the hospital for the surgery, they had already used all the money up. They were caught two days later.

(Shanghai Daily February 1, 2005)