Are children becoming more violent because of adults? asks weapons awareness trainer Steve Collins of PS5.
Sadly street crime and violence has permeated the very fabric of our lives. In our inner cities, suburban areas and now even small country villages no-one seems to be immune. Violence degrades the quality of all our lives. This diminished quality of life ranges from an inability to walk safely alone in the park or on the streets of our own towns, to the forced installation of expensive security systems and, because of an abject lack of a police presence, the necessity to formulate neighbourhood watch groups. Even in our quietest country villages long gone are the days when front doors were left open so friends and neighbours could just pop in.
Reports of children committing suicide as a result of experiencing violence and bullying in schools are rife. Children carrying weapons and committing horrific crimes of violence, murder and rape are on the increase. Many youths simply believe that they have to carry a weapon at school and on the streets to protect themselves. All these things are growing to epidemic proportions so much so that there is now a worldwide problem with aggressive and violent behaviour from children and adolescents not only on the streets of our cities, but in our small towns and rural villages. Bizarre as it may sound, some communities are literally living in fear of the local kids.
For many years there has been huge amounts of psychosocial research into violent and aggressive behaviour. This research has shown there to be a substantial link in aggressive behaviour from infancy to adulthood. A child of five or six years who shows aggressive and violent behaviour is more likely than others to exhibit delinquent, criminal and violent behaviour in adolescence and adulthood. Simple fact; in the majority of cases violent children grow up into violent adults. However, no child is born violent. There’s no such thing as a three-year old mass murderer or serial killer. Yes, very young children have killed and do kill, but many more children are killed by adults than there are adults killed by children. For a child to develop into a violent adolescent and consequently a violent adult, the child first has to be exposed to violence and that first exposure will invariably have been at the hands of an older person. As I said earlier, children aren’t born violent. True, but children are born into violence and violent situations.
In very simplistic terms (and because child abuse is a deep, dark subject that would certainly need more than this short article to explore) the first and most fundamental cause is to have suffered violent abuse at home at the hands of a parent or parents. However, even if a child is not on the receiving end but regularly witnesses aggressive and violent behaviour being dished out to others by a father, mother or older brothers and sisters, they will and do conclude that violent behaviour is quite acceptable and a normal part of life.
All children learn by modelling and imitation. In other words they copy what they see. Even if a child comes from a perfectly stable non violent home, it’s bewildering to think just how many acts of violence that child will have witnessed before the age of 12. Violence in the media, gratuitous violence at the football ground, the symbolic yet nonetheless explicit violence in TV shows or at the movies, the death and mutilation glamorised in high-tech interactive video games, not to mention the violence and abuse advocated in modern rock and rap music, especially towards women. Consuming vast quantities of violent material plus the likelihood of actually having to live in a violent environment, add to the mix the fact that many of these kids (for of course that’s all they are) have been conditioned into believing that resorting to violence is perfectly acceptable to get what they want. This plus an unshakeable belief that the more aggressive and violent they are the more ‘respect’ they will command and you have a serious problem. A problem that touches us all.
In most cases where children have been violent to or even killed their parents it has been found that the child has usually been abused in some manner – degraded, humiliated, beaten, sexually abused or even tortured. The child often responds to violence with violence, for that’s all it understands. Sometimes an abused child can turn its violent anger towards a sibling within the family.
Most people are afraid of gangs of rowdy juveniles and at times with good reason. However, as with rape victims, the majority of people attacked and killed by adolescents are known to them. If a stranger is killed it is usually during a robbery. This sometimes happens because the juvenile will panic, but it’s more likely simply because of peer pressure, and usually from older kids. Statistics show that murder is more likely to occur when two or more juveniles jointly commit a crime. Also, if they are under the influence of alcohol or drugs, the more aggressive and violent they are likely to be. So staying away from gangs of drunken teenagers would seem a sensible thing to do.
In reality violent crime touches us all in one way or another therefore we have all become victims of violent crime. Even if it has never happened to you personally, the likelihood is that it will happen to someone you know – a friend, neighbour or even a relation and even if that’s not the case, the fact that we are forced to witness almost every day on the TV and in the newspapers the misery and suffering inflicted on total strangers by violent crime, gives us all cause for concern about our own safety and that of our loved ones. So you see, we are all victims by the very thought of aggressive and violent behaviour.
Anyone who has experienced a violent tragedy in their lives will know how they were forced to take a long hard look at everything in their lives from that day on. Often a long and arduous search for responsibility engulfs the mind, but the results are usually unrewarding. People related to a victim tend to fall into two categories – those who blame themselves and those who blame others.
‘The gift of fear’
In Gavin De Becker’s book ‘The gift of fear’ he writes of one Willie Bosket acquiring remarkable criminal credentials very early in life. Apparently by the time he was 15 this young man had stabbed 25 people and been in and out of detention facilities for an estimated 2000 other crimes. He was arrested for killing two people and commented, “I did it for the experience.” But because he was still only a minor he could only be detained for five years. Even behind bars Willie Bosket’s violence continued. He allegedly set fire to his cell seven times and violently attacked guards nine times. “I’m a monster the system created,” he says. One thing for certain, Willie was not born that way, so someone or something created him. Where should the blame lie for Willie’s actions? In the State of New York, USA there is now a legal statute that allows juveniles to be tried as adults. It is called ‘The Willie Bosket Law’.
De Becker relates another very poignant story. One brother says to the other,
“Why did you grow up to be a drunk?”
The answer came back,
“Because our dad was a drunk”.
The second brother then asked,
“Why didn’t you grow up to be a drunk?”
The answer came back,
“Because our dad was a drunk”.
Many kids live through awful childhoods and still grow up to become upright, productive, contributing and law-abiding adults. Whatever the outcome, it’s adults that make children into whoever they become.
It’s not just the UK; it’s an international problem. For example, panic broke out amongst a crowd on the streets of Berlin. As people were leaving a celebration open-air sound-and-light concert, a knife-wielding teenager went on a rampage and, suddenly began to randomly slash and stab at the people in the crowd; the attacker had mingled with the crowd as they were leaving the show. Over 100 police officers and 11 ambulances were called out, but because of the narrowness of the streets it was difficult for police and emergency services to reach the scene. Although none of his victims had life-threatening injuries this young lad managed to wound 27 people in a very short space of time. Many of the injured were hospitalised. The teenager was as always known to police for previous acts of violence. Knife attacks, shootings, acid attacks, beating, rapes and terrorism invade our lives and with the exception of Brexit these things monopolise the media.
Fact:Violent crime is on the increase.
Fact: Those who commit violent crimes are getting younger.
Fact: We are all victims of violent crime.
Fact: Not enough is being done about it.
