Several gangs of underage children are operating in central Helsinki, robbing other children for their mobile phones and pocket money. Police believe there are some fifty to one hundred children in the gangs, and they operate within a radius of 300 metres from the Stockmann department store in downtown Helsinki.

   

92 children were apprehended for the 85 robberies committed by under 15-year-olds last year in downtown Helsinki.

   

The police are concerned as the number of such robberies committed by children doubled when compared to the previous year. Children committed 484 crimes of different types in central Helsinki last year. Most of these were thefts, assaults and vandalism. One year previously, this figure was 348.

The police stress

that a small number of children is responsible for the majority of the robberies. If they could be controlled, the amount of cases would drop dramatically. Police interrogations have also revealed that the gangs are not organised like professional groups of criminals.

   

The gangs of children also lack established leaders, and rather the groups are formed and dissolved by chance.

   

Children rarely use weapons in their robberies, but the assailants may threaten that they have knives in their pockets.

In a typical scenario,

a gang of five to ten children seeks suitable victims, one or two innocent-looking children, that may have been followed already from a train or bus coming into town. They ask to borrow a mobile phone in quite a friendly manner, but never return the phone.

   

After that there may be some threatening, pushing, and shoving. During the commotion the victims’ pocket money also disappears. The normal loot is between FIM five and one hundred.

   

Evenings and nights on weekends are the most dangerous time for youngsters in the downtown area.

   

The stolen mobile phones are passed on to Russia and further east, where they are recoded. The police advise parents to act quickly if a mobile phone is stolen, because calls are often made abroad to expensive numbers, and bills can quickly go up to thousands of markka.

One new element

in the robberies and thefts committed by children is that some years ago, the members of gangs always came from the same country, but nowadays the gangs include African and Asian children as well as Finns and other Europeans.

   

Of the 92 children under 15 years of age apprehended in downtown Helsinki, 57 were African, 26 Finnish, four from Asia, four from elsewhere in Europe and one from the United States.

   

No Russian children were arrested, however. The cooperation and determined work of Russian immigrant families, the social welfare authorities and various organisations has produced excellent results.

Now actions

are being targeted at African immigrant families. The first African children were apprehended for robberies in 1997. In that year there were four of them, seven in 1998 and five in 1999. However, in 2000 the number of arrested African children increased tenfold.

   

In the age group of 15 to 17-year-olds, 108 were apprehended last year for robberies. 56 were Finnish, and 37 African.

   

One in three robberies is solved, even though some four to five hundred cases are given to each officer in the downtown precinct.