Teen Crime Getting Out of Hand in Britain

It was reported in The Straits Times, 23 August 07, in Liverpool, Britain, an 11 year old boy was gunned down by a youth riding a BMX bike. Earlier this month, a 47 year old man died from head injuries after confronting a gang of teenagers. Three days after that, Mr Evren Anil died after challenging a group of youths and an elderly man who tried to help had a knife put to his throat. All these incidents happened in Britain. With the rate of teen crime getting out of hand, it seems that the youths have placed no value on human life. Teen crime is also prevalent in Singapore. Although teen crimes in Singapore do not involve guns, they are still on the rise and if nothing is done to stop it, it will just keep getting worse. A simple action such as stealing something from underneath a classmate's desk can lead to students trying to break into other people's lockers to steal valuables. Some people may deem these as trivial crimes. However, if these youths are not corrected early, they may grow confident and move on to crimes on an even larger scale. Perhaps hacking into a computer system to steal money. According to experts who were interviewed by The Straits Times, the problem of teen crimes has been building for the past 20 years. For the past 20 years, nothing or little was done to stop teen crimes. This allowed the teenagers to feel like nothing could stop them and the crimes they commited just kept getting worse and worse. Likewise, in Singapore, to prevent teen crimes from getting worse, something must be done to curb this problem. Teen crimes have also got to do with the values the parents instill in the child. If parents do not take their responsibilities seriously, the child may not respect them. There will then be a lack of discipline and respect from the child. Values such as respect should be nurtured at home otherwise, youths will carry this disrespect past the thresholds of their doorsteps. Of course, to be able to discharge their responsibilities, parents must establish a healthy parent-child relationship with their children. They must be willing to invest their time in their children and start when they are young. This way they will know what makes their children tick. A survey by the University of Leicester revealed that two thirds of school teachers had faced verbal or physical abuse, from both students and parents. I will end off with a quote from The Straits Times by Mr Brennan. "We can't persecute these teens, but we need to know what makes them tick and time is running out.".