I’ve just watched part of a programme/ documentary on the increase of gun crime and general crime in young people and it got me thinking.

This programme was based upon youth in manchester where the gun crime is double anywhere else in the whole country.

The first part of the programme interviewed a lady who watched Youth’s gather outside her home, accross the road and vandalise cars, windows etc, so she installed her own CCTV camera to help gather evidence to help protect her neighbours from this mindless vandalism, of course every so often the police came along and gave them ASBO’s, now I have two problems with this, as a Youth Worker.

The first problem is that ‘why is it always the troublesome few that give youth a bad name?’, yes, there are young people out there who do drugs, who vandalise and are generally horrible however they are a minority, many young people who hang out on streets are there because they want to meet their friends and there’s no where else to go, most of them are happy sitting down or standing up and socialising, the generalisation that all street kids (in a non-homeless sense) carry guns, vandalise and are generally unpleasent creates a bad generalisation to the point where people are scared to walk on the same side of the road as them for fear of being attacked, this media-induced fear is silly, for every one person who is attacked by youths I suspect there are at least 100 who have walked past without the youth evening thinking about attacking.

The second problem I have is ASBO’s, the programme interviewed a policeman who said it shows the young people they can’t mess with the law and get away with it, however I think an ASBO proves that they can, yes they have a bit of paper saying they can’t go to a particular street but hey, there’s always another place. I don’t claim to have the solution to the problem but I do know that ASBO’s aren’t, they’re not a solution, they are merely shifting the problem.

The whole issue of why this crime has gone up is beyond me, young people do statistically get more experienced younger now, for example it is proven that girls hit puberty much young than previous generations. However this ‘urge to grow up and feel important’ among young people seems to have great consequences, for example, the idea of say a gun or a knife would make a young person feel important and grown up, however they don’t have the maturity to cope with it, in Spiderman Peter Parker’s uncle says ‘With great power comes great responsibility’ and to an extent I think this applies here, yes a gun or knife may make a young person feel secure and responsible and grown up however it comes with a great responsibility.

My final thought on this matter takes the Christian stand, and part of me wonders if this is due to the amount of ‘wrecked’ homes, with the divorce rate on the increase, along with single mums, kids without 2 parents surely it’s not doing the kids any good, either to be shipped between houses, lose mum’s attention whilst she’s with her new boyfriend etc. It just doesn’t seem to be how God intended, God intended a male parent and a female parent, married for a purpose, yes even kids with 2 parents in the bible stuffed up and did stupid things (Cain and Able for example), however part of me thinks that this may be something to do with the reasoning behind this youth crime increase. I also think another reason for this could well be down to the pressure that is put onto young people in schools, with increasing pressure to do exams, coursework, revision and take as many GCSE’s as you can cram into a day, I think it makes the kids who aren’t as brainy have a real lack of self worth, in a world where things are measured by grade, so perhaps this gun culture could link to this to.

Anyway those are just some thoughts