Lawyer suggests that children's parents should also receive sentence for practice

A Shanghai court has jailed two women who "rented" village children as young as 7 years old and forced them to steal.

Song Yinxiu and Song Yincui, no relation, were sentenced to three and a half years for organizing juveniles to carry out activities that violate public security - the first time the charge has been applied in Shanghai since it was introduced in 2009.

Qingpu District People's Court heard that the duo, both from Yongzhou, Hunan province, had paid 50,000 yuan ($7,270) in "rent" to the parents of four children aged 7 to 10 in their native county, Daoxian.

The women then took the children to Shanghai and forced them to steal cash and goods totaling nearly 20,000 yuan from supermarkets and other stores between March and May last year.

Prosecutors said the parents were aware of the women's criminal intentions. The 7-year-old told police she had five siblings and that her two brothers, ages 6 and 8, had also been "loaned out" to gangs of thieves.

"In the past, people who committed such crimes were charged with theft," which carries a lighter sentence, according to Wei Guilian, a publicity officer with the district court. She said the tougher charge faced by the two Songs "means the children's rights were taken into consideration".

She did not explain why no Shanghai court had previously applied the charge of organizing juveniles to steal.

Shanghai police said suspects in such cases are often women from Daoxian and Jiangyong counties in Yongzhou. From September 2015 to the end of last year, police detained 120 female suspects from Daoxian and 30 from Jiangyong.

"Sometimes these people taught their children to steal and sometimes they borrowed other people's children," Wei said, adding that the court has handled several similar cases.

Children involved in such activities are sent to a care center in Jiading district until the police investigation is complete, at which point they are usually returned to their parents.

According to Shanghai police, 31 children under the age of 14 have been placed in care since 2014 and roughly 30 percent are reoffenders.

One way to better protect the children is to temporarily deprive their parents of custody, Wei said, but as yet, there is no suitable place to care for these children. The center only provides basic, short-term food and accommodation, she said.

"The court is in talks with the local civil affairs department and the All-China Women's Federation to find the best way to accommodate these children and provide them with schooling and psychological treatment," she added.

Yi Shenghua, a criminal attorney with Yingke Law Firm in Beijing, suggested the children's parents should be seen as accomplices and also receive jail terms.

"They already regard their children as a burden and make use of them as a way of making money," he said. "The punishment of being deprived of custody is too light. Their behavior equals abandonment and mistreatment in a broad sense."