HAMBURG. After more than seventy burglaries, Hamburg’s social authorities have filed a request to place the alleged head of a migrant youth gang in a closed institution. The boy is an eleven-year-old Moroccan, reports the Image-NewspaperHe came to Germany last November as an unaccompanied minor. Last Tuesday, the police picked up and arrested the child during several burglaries in Norderstedt, Schleswig-Holstein.
Because of his age the asylum seeker is of legal age. He also has to be taken to another state because the red-green Senate does not allow closed housing. The state chairman of the German Police Union, Thomas Jungfer, criticized this circumstance. “Anyone who knows exactly as a child why he cannot be prosecuted legally and behaves accordingly insolently and defiantly, must be shown the clear advantage by the rule of law,” he said. Image.
Asylum seekers put pressure on the city’s crisis facilities for minors
However, the Moroccan’s 16-year-old accomplice, a Tunisian with dual nationality, was taken into custody. Both were previously housed at the child and youth welfare office on Feuerbergstrasse. Since the beginning of the year, the police have intervened there around 280 times. So far, 101 cases of physical injuries, 29 cases of drug abuse, up to 30 attacks on caregivers, 35 cases of damage to property and up to 42 threats have been registered.
The city’s only emergency facility for minors has been experiencing staff shortages for years. A total of twelve vacancies remain unfilled, four employees are believed to be on long-term sick leave, while three others have reported signs of overwork. Recently, 120 children and young people were living in the shelter, while there are only 102 places. Hamburg’s social authorities announced this as early as 2023 at the request of the Hamburger Evening Leaf ofwould the “large numbers” of asylum seekers make housing a challenge. “Today, 20 percent of all cases taken into care are already done decentrally by independent providers,” a spokesperson explains. (kuk)