Gendarmerie criminality survey: “13 million violence-prone youngsters threaten to blow up Algerian society”

A senior National Gendarmerie officer, Brigadier General Menad Nouaba has affirmed that over 13 million misguided and neglected youngsters represent a “potential power-keg” which might blow-up at any time the Algerian society if swift remedial measures are not taken by the relevant authorities including large-scale campaigns aimed at sensitizing these youngsters to forsake all together the recourse to violence and all misdemeanours in everyday life.

Taking the floor during a high-profile international seminar held Sunday in Algiers devoted to the rising criminality scourge in Algeria and how best to cope with it, he pointed out that this nefarious phenomenon was the direct consequence of terrorism which brought about in its trail a surging wave of lawlessness, an overt hostile attitude towards the state apparatus, and a propensity to using violence to further one’s illegal designs to the detriment of peaceful and law-abiding citizens.

This bleak situation which concerns an estimated 13 million Algerian youths, aged under 18, could threaten seriously the cohesion and stability of the Algerian society, he warned.

For his part, Colonel Messaoudi Abdelhamid indicated that the annual criminality rate recorded by the National Gendarmerie services between 2008 and 2012 was set at over 31 per cent.

In the course of the year 2012, a total of 2.241 criminal cases had been registered involving 1.371 males and 870 females, according to a National Gendarmerie statistical survey.

88 per cent of the criminal offenses were committed by teenagers aged between 18 and 14, while 9 per cent were the work of those aged between 14 and 10 and to a lesser extent, 0.3 per cent of violent acts were perpetrated by younger teenagers aged under 10, he added.