Men commit vast majority of traffic sector crimes: report

More than 80 percent of perpetrators who committed crimes in the traffic sector in the Yangtze River Delta region are found to be male, according to a Shanghai Third Intermediate People's Procuratorate report released on Wednesday.

The report is the first on criminal prosecution from 2021 through June of this year that the procuratorate has released since its founding 10 years ago.

The procuratorate mainly hears railway-related criminal cases in the Yangtze River Delta region and criminal cases in the integrated traffic sector in the city, which encompasses urban rail transit, civil aviation, as well as water transport.

The report indicates the most common crimes include theft, aiding information network activities, forging seals, forging national documents and certificates, concealing or disguising criminal proceeds and the proceeds derived from crime, fraud, and so on.

Moreover, theft has topped the list of all cases, but has been on the decline year by year, with the proportion decreasing from 31 percent in 2021 to 20 percent in the first half of 2024, according to the report.

The city's prosecutors in the traffic area are cracking down on crimes that endanger social security.

In the last three and a half years, they have arrested 1,062 individuals in 791 cases and handled and prosecuted 2,151 individuals in 1,529 cases.

Helpful for the minors

Prosecutors also pay close attention to the protection of minors.

In one of the 10 typical cases in the report, three men were sentenced to prison terms ranging from one year and six months to two years for forcibly molesting minors on a Metro train.

During the investigation of one such case, prosecutors worked collaboratively with the Shanghai rail transit policeman to create a suspect profile and included individuals with criminal records as key control targets.

They also collaborated with local police officers and court authorities to sign the working agreement on punishing the crime of molestation of minors on public transportation and the agreement on establishing a sharing mechanism for research and judgment on suspicious abducted children taking public transportation.

As a result, they successfully prevented six child abduction cases.