After two years of decline, police in Oslo are dealing with a jump in crime carried out by juveniles, some of it violent. Police point out that just 3 percent of Oslo’s roughly 50,000 residents aged 10 to 17 are behind the crimes.
Police have registered 151 Oslo residents under the age of 18 as being members of organized gangs. The number of youth crimes in Oslo and suburban Asker and Bærum reported in 2017 hasn’t been so high, however, since 2010.
“The most important thing for us is to find out why the youth are behaving as they do, and what needs to be done to solve the problems,” Inga Marte Thorkildsen of the Socialist Left party, who’s in charge of Oslo’s schools, told newspaper Aftenposten on Monday.
She said the schools seek more systematic contact and cooperation with police, and follow-up after crimes are carried out by school pupils. Police currently only report troubled youth to the school administration if they have four or more registered crimes on their records. Some school officials think the barrier should be much lower.
Calls were also going out for more parental control of their children and cooperation with the police. Some of the parents involved are immigrants with children caught between various cultures. Police can also be bound by confidentiality regulations that prevent them from reporting crimes or even violence carried out by a juvenile offender to adminstrators at his or her school.
newsinenglish.no staff
