Teenage Crime Falls by 24.7% in Russia

Teenage crime in Russia fell by 24.7% in 2002 thanks to the work of the Interior Ministry's Interdepartmental Taskforce on Neglected Children. This was announced by Police Colonel Vladimir Golubovsky at a meeting of the taskforce on Tuesday.

According to Golubovsky, around 700,000 teenagers in need of state help came into government agencies' hands in 2002. Of these, over 550,000 were handed over to their parents, 45,000 were admitted to orphanages, 21,000 to boarding schools, and 10,000 to hospitals.

In 2002 the taskforce's experts made about 40 trips into the regions. The taskforce managed to stabilize the situation in a number of regions where a large number of children had previously been refused places in orphanages and hospitals.