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[Romulator]

In a study of 743 students, aged between 14-18 in Perth, Australia:

Spoiler below!

"Nearly 40% of all students surveyed admitted to at least one illegal activity. Thus a large proportion of students, regardless of gang status, engage in antisocial or crimi­nal activities. While no activity listed was exclusive to either group, those identify­ing as gang members were overrepresented in all activities listed. Generally, young people engaged in underage drinking, drug use (mainly cannabis) and fighting. Gang members, while also engaging in all these activities, did so far more frequently than non-gang members. They were also over represented in other more 'criminal' type activities. For example, 3 times as many gang members were involved with stealing, 7 times as many in burglary, 3 times as many selling drugs, 16 times as many involved with motor vehicle theft, over 20 times more involved in robbery, 4 times as many carry weapons, and 3 times as many involved in fighting".

tl;dr - Youth crime in Australia is bad.

[Tiger]

Real human bean

[Potato]

Real human bean

and a real hero <3 There's something awfully poignant about it, now that he actually ate it, rip.

[Nice]

In a study of 743 students, aged between 14-18 in Perth, Australia:

Spoiler below!

"Nearly 40% of all students surveyed admitted to at least one illegal activity. Thus a large proportion of students, regardless of gang status, engage in antisocial or crimi­nal activities. While no activity listed was exclusive to either group, those identify­ing as gang members were overrepresented in all activities listed. Generally, young people engaged in underage drinking, drug use (mainly cannabis) and fighting. Gang members, while also engaging in all these activities, did so far more frequently than non-gang members. They were also over represented in other more 'criminal' type activities. For example, 3 times as many gang members were involved with stealing, 7 times as many in burglary, 3 times as many selling drugs, 16 times as many involved with motor vehicle theft, over 20 times more involved in robbery, 4 times as many carry weapons, and 3 times as many involved in fighting".

tl;dr - Youth crime in Australia is bad.

Imo it's not much different anywhere else

It's a rare sight to not see minors drinking (atleast in my country, but then again, we're known for high alcohol consumption, drugs and suicide rate). Drugs, granted, are not so common among minors -especially hard drugs- but I know that myself along with almost half of my schoolmates already had weed at the age of 15. At 14, final day of elementary school I remember both of the classes getting up together on top of a small hill in my town and we got wasted. All of us.

Getting into fights is almost unavoidable if you spend your evenings outside, going to parties, etc. Again, especially among the youth.

Weed, drinking, fighting...Yup the "illegal" activities are already piling up, activities that would describe almost an average kid 14-20 nowadays. At first glance, it sounds really far fetched and horrible but giving it a second thought, you'll realise it's not hard for one to get involved in them at all.

As for gang members, now it depends, what in your eyes is a gang. Is it a group of friends who stick together? Is it partners in crime? Both? Me and my friends consider ourselves a crew and because -we are-. We're bboys and by definition, a group of bboys together is a crew (bboy = bronx boy = breakdancer - to save you the time from google). Lots of people consider us a gang though and by some definitions we would qualify as one. We've got into fights together before, we help each other, we did trespassing, graffiti, drink together and at times have weed, we even identify ourselves by a name because every bboy crew has a name for the sake of recognision in large scale competitions.

But in our eyes, we're still not a gang. We are not focused on making the world a shitty place, we're not together to bully people etc etc.

Was it specified about how it was decided whether someone was a gang member or was it just a question "Do you belong in a gang?" Because honestly, anyone that goes out with atleast 2 more friends could call themselves a gang.

Anyways, my point:

I'm pretty much guilty of everything in that list except thievery and burglary (is there a difference?) and I'm not some raggedy criminal or a villain.

Imo everything from the list should be exluded asides stealing and carrying weapons

[Mudbill]

I'm pretty much guilty of everything in that list except thievery and burglary (is there a difference?)

I think the difference is thievery is basically theft/stealing, but burglary is actually breaking into someone's house, probably with the intention of stealing.

[Kreekakon]

This is why I'm happy I live in conservative Taiwan happyland.

[MrBehemoth]

tl;dr - Youth crime in Australia is bad.

Hmmmm. I can think of a few reasons why this is dubious.

Spoiler below!

1) Maybe traffic violations are more likely to be committed by people over 20, but that's because more people over 20 drive. You could say that the survey is biased towards "young people's crimes", that is crimes that are more likely to be committed by a young person than an older person.

2) There's no control group here. If 40% of 14-18 years admit to having committed one of these crimes, what percentage of people over 18 years old would also admit to having committed a crime? Are people under 18 more likely to admit it? Besides, actual career criminals are more likely to be younger simply by virtue of the fact the they are less likely to have been caught and imprisoned yet, or less likely to have "gone straight" yet.

3) Dogfood's point about gangs. The study Rom is quoting goes into this in more detail (sorry mate, hope you don't mind me checking your sources ) and explains that they were asked 2 questions: "Do you consider your special group of friends to be a gang?" and "Are you a member of a gang?". It goes on to say, "gang membership was the unit of analysis (dependent variable), and was created by transforming the two questions mentioned above into a single variable labelled ‘gang membership’." In other words, the survey does not differentiate between a Perthian equivalent of Bloods and Crips or Dogfood's crew. Obviously there is a world of difference. Furthermore, "Because we were also interested in the likelihood of gang membership, logistic regression was also undertaken, with the aim of identifying those variables that increase the likelihood or probability of gang membership." In other words, the types and severity of crimes influenced whether or not a young person was seen as being likely to be part of a gang. In that sense, you're bound to come to the conclusion that more severe crimes are committed by people in gangs, if that's what you use to decide whether they're in a gang or not.

4) Lots of these crimes depend on context. For example, "drug dealing" could include picking up a small amount of weed for a friend. "Motor vehicle theft" could be "borrowing" your parent's car without permission and putting it back before they noticed. Stealing could be petty shoplifting, or even piracy. Fighting could be a playground scuffle. I think that between the ages of 14 and 18, me and my friends committed all of those, and while they were all against the law, nobody would have called us criminals or delinquents. Some of these crimes, i.e., under age drinking, "light" drugs like cannabis and occasional fighting have been part of growing up since, like, forever.

I'm not saying that youth crime in Perth is not a problem - it could be a big problem for all I know, and I did grow up in the countryside and now live a small city with a fairly minor crime problem so maybe I'm sheltered/naive.

But I do think that the study and the article have an agenda. (All scientific/statistical studies have the agenda of justifying their continued funding.) For contrast, this far less scholarly (and therefore admittedly subjective) article points out how perception of youth crime has changed in the last couple of hundred years. [Edit: or rather, how it hasn't)

[Wooderson]

Most crime among youth is based around age laws and wars on consciousness. Wouldn't worry that much.

[RedKnight]

Well, teens are also drinking beer and some parent's don't give a fuck.

[Romulator]

Whether you fellas believe it or not, but you more or less pointed out a few weaknesses I missed in the crime study I have to do, and I can put some of them to use in a comparative essay

Edit: I would consider myself somewhat naive and passive to such statistics, even surprised to some extent, since the only crime I am likely to be convicted of is piracy (since I 'try before I buy'). Stealing a car, doing drugs, even underrage drinking is all foreign to me. Point the finger at me and say something like "You haven't lived Lachlan", and that's okay. I'm eighteen and I'm fine with the fact I haven't done any of those things yet. I would rather live in knowing I am relatively safe from the law than having to live in anxiety.

Have a random addition to your reputation, a picture of a triple chocolate chip cookie, and a URL where you can make a whale/dolphin thing move to your mouse.



http://img0.liveinternet.ru/images/attac...ite198.swf

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Also; if I remember what my criminology teacher said - Thievery is the act of stealing from someone or someplace, and burglary is the act of breaking and entering someone's private property with the intent of stealing, by force against the owner or infrastructure if necessary.

I think the difference is thievery is basically theft/stealing, but burglary is actually breaking into someone's house, probably with the intention of stealing.

Is correct :3