In the early hours of 21 April, 2012, police on patrol noticed that a Honda Civic near a Kings Cross nightclub was being driven by a young boy, aged 14 years. The vehicle had an additional five occupants aged between 13 and 24. Both the teenage driver and the police recognise each other. The police knew the teenager well. According to Gridneff (2012 n.p), the police on patrol had known the driver as deviant since he was 8 years old. The teen tried to escape from the police by using the busy footpath opposite a nightclub. What ensured was dragging of two pedestrians under the car while the police fired at its occupants. The driver and one of his passengers sustained serious bullet wounds. The police department was criticised after the footage emerged showing one of the policemen dragging a passenger out of the car and punching him in the face.
This incident drew the attention of stakeholders to applicable methods that can be used in dealing with delinquency at the community level. Reports that the police and the teenage driver knew each other means that there was a possible opportunity to prevent the event.
This paper will examine social methods of crime control applicable in this scenario.
| Developmental crime prevention |
The Australian crime control system primarily relies upon a punitive approach. These approaches are less effective as statistics have shown a high rate of reoffending among those who are punished. According to the Australian Institute of Criminology (2011 n.p.) recidivism for punished offenders stands at 32% within 2 years. 60% of individuals within the correctional facilities have a history of having gone through the correctional institutions before. Therefore, punitive interventions are not very effective in crime control and the stakeholders should focus on alternatives such as handling crime as a community initiative.
Handling crime using punitive measures tends to alienate the community and the family from the process. These two social units are in fact likely to counter the whole process out fear that their families will be victimised. Punitive approaches to crime deterrence tend to victimise both the perpetrator and the society at large. The authorities that ensure that all the members of the community, including the perpetrators themselves, are protected. (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2015 n.p.).
The events at Kings Cross could have been prevented through some form of social intervention to crime. The crime committed in this case can being teen delinquency. There are a number of social ways that the community can come on board to deal with crime within this age bracket. Though these interventions may take some time to produce results, they are effective in solving more societal issues than the punitive approach.
The police had known the teen for over six years. This indicates that they had an opportunity to intervene on the teenager’s case early enough to produce a reasonable long-term social and economic impact. Developmental crime prevention is based on the proposition that younger people are more likely to reform and become reproductive members of society compared to older ones. The police noticed that the young man had deviant tendencies when he was 8. According to Wheatherburn (2004 p.64) young people are more teachable and can easily fit into the demands and expectations of society.
Developmental crime prevention aims at intervening at certain important transition points in the young person’s life to prevent future delinquency. Carroll et al. (2009 p.23) notes that some of the critical points in the family and the community can interview include when transitioning from one educational level to the other or when entering the workforce. Developmental crime prevention is a strategy that targets some of the risk and protective factors associated with crime. The program identifies, qualifies and determines the best ways to manipulate the protective and risk factors that have been used in successfully predicting offending the the past (Carroll et al. 2009 p.3). Developmental crime prevention brings together stakeholders who provide basic resources and services to members of the community to ensure that they are comfortable and can meet their respective needs.
The teenager in this case was from the impoverished district of Redfern, inhabited by poorer Aboriginals. Therefore, it is very likely that the teenager was pushed into crime by poverty. After the incident, the authorities realised that more could be done to avoid young people from the district from becoming criminals in the future (Courier Mail, 2012 n.p). The police initiated a conversation with the elders with the aim of finding a solution to the high crime and delinquency rates in the area.
The Aboriginal community of Redfern has fallen behind Australia in terms of socio-economic development. Many young people are brought up in and impoverished environment that contributes to their entry in crime (Cuthbert, 2016 p.55). Some of these individuals become criminals in order to fend for themselves and their families or some do so due to limited attention from the parents or lack of access to activities that keep other young people engaged and away from crime, for instance, education.
The appropriate early intervention program for the teen and other Aboriginal children and youth would be providing resources and services to the community, family, school and the individual child. These services are aimed at minimising the effect that risk factors, such as poverty and poor parenting, have on the tendency of individuals engaging in crime. The confrontations between the boy and the police from a young age should have triggered the interest of the local department. The department would have brought in other stakeholders such as community elders, local educational institutions and child support departments to investigate and determine the issues behind the child’s behaviour and that of other young people within the community (Australian Crime Prevention Council, 2014 n.p).
The community and family’s role in this method is providing information. They should also provide emotional support to the young people by urging them to divert their energy towards activities that promote their wellbeing such as education and sports. The local and national governments can also contribute towards the success of this initiative by implementing strategies that make essential services such as health and education more accessible (Arthurson and Jacobs, 2004 p. 27).
| Conclusion |
Research has proven that social methods of crime control have better results that the institutional initiatives that are mainly punitive. However, the social interventions may be viewed as labelling the participants as delinquent (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2015 n.p). This issue can be overcome by implementing early interventions. IF this is done, the community will view the initiatives as a way of helping them overcome their problems and are more likely to collaborate.