Empathy for young crims hard to find

IN the year 2020, revelations young criminals are using social media to document and broadcast their offending is not shocking, but it is insight into their breathtakingly brazen behaviour.

A investigation has discovered a group of juveniles who have branded themselves on social media under an exclusive criminal account name, most of them slugged with the hashtag “WDT2P” – an acronym for “we don’t talk to police”.

James Cook University criminologist Dr Mark David Chong said these young offenders were doing this to build status, communicate, recruit, create an identity and keep a record of their criminal jaunts.

What is more concerning is his remarks that these juveniles feel “very little guilt” about their illegal activities.

While the root cause of criminal behaviour among children remains disenfranchisement, likely from difficult upbringings, it is not hard to see why the Townsville community finds it difficult to empathise with the plights of these kids.

Dr Chong said young people would still find a way to promote their illegal activities if social media did not exist, and perhaps youth crime would decrease if they didn’t have access to things like Instagram and Snapchat.

But when it comes to crime prevention, social media platforms such as Facebook play an important role, particularly in a city such as Townsville where these crime and Neighbourhood Watch pages have become almost live blogs of the offending that takes place each day.

Local police say these groups of young offenders aren’t operating as a gang, unlike their counterparts in Brisbane. This is mild relief considering how rampant youth offending already is in our city.