Father and son arrested in Alicante, Spain, over violent street robberies

Bag snatches in Alicante: a legal resident father and his 16-year-old son

There are crimes that should never have been committed again, and this is one of them. The National Police have arrested a 50-year-old man and his 16-year-old son in Alicante, Spain, as the suspected perpetrators of three violent robberies committed by snatching bags from victims. The victims, women aged 87, 72 and 46, ended up on the ground. Two of them were taken to hospital; one with a broken hip. At 87, a fracture like that is often the beginning of the end, a fact that purely legal analyses tend to overlook.

The arrested man, of Algerian origin and legally resident in Spain after taking part in the latest regularization process, had a prior police record. The case reopens the question of what checks are applied to someone who already has a history. He had also been reported for driving without a licence, and police are investigating whether both took part in other unsolved snatches.

That said, the case does not justify drawing any conclusions about regularization processes as a whole. It does highlight the difference in treatment between adult and minor: the 16-year-old son was placed in a juvenile detention centre after appearing before the juvenile prosecutor's office; the father is in pretrial detention. What can be expected is that the case will be used to tighten controls and, also, to remind people that these robberies are not minor offences. At certain ages, a bag snatch can be a death sentence.