Dangerous Children

The Belgrade police announced that sixteen year old A.P. is suspected in the murder of Dejan Marjanovic ``Saban.'' He has been arrested and was being given a hearing by Judge Zoran Tatalovic of the Juvenile Division at the time this article was being written. The young man whom the police arrested immediately after the murder, Milan Radonjic (18), has been released from detention, but is being charged with hiding the murder weapon.

As is well known, Marjanovic was murdered at 2PM on October 18, in front of his building (Bulevar revolucije 300). The murder was committed with an uncommon 7.65mm calibre pistol. The story that A.P. and Radonjic were friends of the victim, or, in other words, that they were ``Saban's boys,'' is floating through the underworld. According to this story, this was an act of ``selfdefense''Marjanovic allegedly mistreated A.P. and tried to ``take something away'' from him on the day of the crime. A.P. did not allow this, moved away, pulled out his pistol and shot at his ``mentor.''

The death of Dejan Marjanovic ``Saban'' attracted the same media attention as the murders of Branislav Matic ``Beli,'' Aleksandar Knezevic ``Knele,'' ``George'' Stankovic, Radojica Nikcevic and Aleksandar Marincic, or the disappearance of Iso Lero ``Jumbo.'' Unlike the abovementioned murders, which were never solved, the police reacted quickly in the ``Saban case.'' Those familiar with the Belgrade underworld would agree that Marjanovic ``was not of their calibre'' and that the police did not therefore have an overly difficult job.

However, the most interesting aspect of this case is that a sixteen yearold is the suspected murder. There have always been ``criminals who are wetbehindtheears,'' but it seems that there have never been as many as in the past few years. 3200 criminal acts were committed by juveniles in Belgrade last year: eight murders, twelve serious physical assaults, 265 acts of robbery... Just five children between the ages of eight and ten were responsible for more than 100 criminal acts and offenses, and 200 juvenile offenders were under the age of twelve.

The statistics that were announced last month by Milorad Vlahovic, head of the Crime Prevention Board of the Belgrade Police, show that juvenile crime has increased this year, especially the most serious offenses: 2967 serious thefts, 106 acts of robbery and 90 physical and sexual offenses. The total number of criminal acts (4436) already dwarfs last year's, but, because of the collective category ``physical and sexual offenses,'' it is officially unknown how many of these are murders. A frightening record may very well be set this year.

Juvenile crime is one of the few areas in which Belgrade and Serbia are following international trends. In a poll conducted by the Dutch Justice Ministry, almost all (8090 percent) of the juveniles between the ages of 14 and 21 that were polled in Finland, Switzerland, New Zealand and the countries of the European Union acknowledge that they have broken the law at least once in their lives. According to FBI statistics, juvenile crime in the United States rose by 47 percent during the four year period from 1988 to 1992. The trend continues.

However, statistics do not clearly describe ``the revolting easiness with which murder is committed'': In June of this year, B.D. (17) and D.M. (15) beat Selimir Matic to death in Mirijevo (a Belgrade suburb); On August 5 of this year, a seventeenyearold fatally cut a schoolmate's throat in Zemun (a Belgrade suburb). However, the biggest ``star'' of this past summer was I.M. (16), who ran away from Krusevac's juvenile corrective home and quickly caused a ruckus in the city. Moreover, I.M. committed his first offense at age eight, his first apartment robbery at age ten, and his first rape at age thirteen. He stabbed one of his victims in the chest and raped her while she was bleeding. His ``list of accomplishments'' is impressive: nineteen acts of robbery and two rapes.

The provinces are not far behind the capital: in Valjevo, two seventeen yearolds used an axe to kill Milivoj Milatovic (74) on his doorstep this spring, took three dinars (!) from his pocket, and proceeded to go and buy some burek (cheese pie) to eat; This past summer, a fifteenyearold in Novi Sad used a bayonet to murder his neighbor Amra Vidovic in order to steal 140 dinars and a monthly public transportation pass from her; In a village near Stara Pazova, a fourteenyearold murdered an invalid in a wheelchair. A.S. (15) from Cacak, although he has thankfully not murdered anyone, holds an interesting record: he has thusfar succeeded in ``doing'' (robbing) around five hundred houses and apartments. It is difficult to extricate oneself from the impression that ``the kids have really gone mad,'' but reasons are not difficult to find: war, poverty, social anonymity, a moral crisis... Professor Konstantin Momirovic, an adviser at the Institute for Criminological and Sociological Research in Belgrade, directs attention to something else:

``It is estimated that the system of behavior control in five to seven percent of the population in every country is disturbed. It has been proved that even large exterior changes have no influence upon the number of people with strongly established and proven disturbances. That number is generally constant. However, in such societal circumstances as these, their activity is more frequenteven those who would restrain themselves under different conditions decide to act more easily; at the same time, the number of criminal acts `per person' rises. This is true for all, including juveniles.''

It is interesting that, despite deeprooted thinking to the contrary, juvenile criminals come from ``better homes'' with increasing frequency. Judge Vladimir Ilic, head of the Juvenile Division at the Belgrade Hall of Justice, confirms this, explaining that their primary motive is not material benefit, but advancement within the underworld hierarchy:

``Juvenile delinquents most often do not show any remorse in court, nor does one sense that they have any sense of justice. On the contrary, they act like heroes. There have been cases where up to fifty friends would be yelling `we're with you, brother' while a suspected criminal is being brought into the courtroom, which is actually an imitation of scenes from the trials of older and more famous criminals. They want to establish themselves and be seen, because this is how their rating in the underworld goes up. Juveniles have also appeared as proxies of wellknown criminals, from whom they receive weapons that they do not hesitate to use. They also kill for the benefit of the older criminals. However, they never reveal who gave them their orders,'' says Judge Ilic, remembering last year's attempted murder of the Divac brothers:

``Some `kids', one of whom is a juvenile and the other not much older, had orders to kill them. They threw bombs, used shotguns and destroyed the entire apartment. Thankfully, the Divac brothers remained unharmed. Only the juvenile appeared before the court and he would not reveal the identity of his older accomplice at any cost, so we indirectly learned his identity.''

Juveniles have already appeared as ``hired hitmen,'' so the other version of the background to the ``Saban'' murder, in which the juvenile A.P. did someone else's work, does not sound entirely unconvincing. Of course, it is necessary to await the end of the investigation and thereby learn something more about the motive of the accused. In the meantime, it would be good to point out some details which do not refute, but do at least supplement, the ``selfdefense'' story.

A few hours before the murder, Marjanovic telephoned his attorney, claiming that the police attempted to murder him the night before and insisted that this news immediately be conveyed to the media. At noon on the same day, Marjanovic once again called his attorney and agitatedly told him that it had not been the police, that he would discuss everything in private and that it would be necessary to immediately deny the previous news if it had reached the press. Two hours later, Marjanovic was dead. He indeed liked to talk about how the police were after him and that they were inciting ``kids'' to act against him. Maybe he was paranoid or maybe he had some reason to lie, but he was killed in the end, and the killer was in all likelihood a ``kid.''

One should not forget that, prior to his death, Marjanovic publicly admitted that he had finished a ``fairly large job involving coffee.'' People in the underworld react to this story with ``significantly'' raised eyebrows and say that drugs are behind all of this, or, in other words, a conflict of interest (debts or some other problem). The ``motive'' of the juvenile hitman is related to this, because Marjanovic allegedly attempted to take ``something'' away from him. That is why one should not be surprised to here speculations that a ``narcotics trafficking'' clan controlled from ``above'' is behind the murder, and that they have liquidated their prior courier and plan to replace him. Young A.P. just pulled the trigger, most likely unaware in whose behalf and why.

It is not easy to believe such stories, but it is a fact that every average Belgrade drug addict knows by heart the number of some drug dealers who have been selling massive quantities for years and have been unhindered by anyone, even though the police make house arrests of unlucky individuals who have only bought a gram or two. The drug trade brings fabulous earnings, so one cannot rule out that well ``covered'' government agencies do not have interests in it, just as their counterparts abroad do. Perhaps juvenile couriers are at the end of the chain (of the 28 juveniles convicted of the most serious crimes this year, 18 use drugs). They want money and exposure, but are quiet in the courtroom. Even if they were willing to talk, their stories could not be trustedthey are most often fully grown, but practically illiterate adolescents, with a hopelessly poor vocabulary and a low level of intelligence.

They easily become hired hitmen. They are cheap and relatively easy to support. They last an average of one year. New ones replace them, and ``recruitment'' is not a problem in an atmosphere in which all moral criteria have been thrown into disorder.

There has been much talk and writing about juvenile crime in the past few years and the police are persistently attempting to have a law passed which would lower the age level at which juvenile delinquents would have to go to prison rather than correctional institutions (under current laws, children under the age of 16 do not go to prison and juveniles between 16 and 18 only go to prison in exceptional cases). It is unclear whether the eventual threat of stricter punishment of juveniles would bring good results. Social workers oppose such proposals and Professor Konstantin Momirovic says:

``Research shows that classic prison treatment does not bring positive effects, while the penal system in juvenile institutions actually brings about results opposite of those desired. This is not the case only in our country. You cannot treat each of them in the same waycorporate criminals, murderers, and `political' prisoners are thrown into the same prison and there is virtually no separation. It is necessary to first classify the criminals and then send them to specialized institutions. Even that will not help much if preventive measures are not organized in a similar fashion, or, in other words, if risky groups and individuals are not put under some form of social control.''

According to Professor Momirovic, this is how developed countries engaged in crime prevention are approaching the problem. All other methods have been shown to be an unnecessary waste of time and money.