Activist suggests creation of special committee to analyse juvenile delinquency
SIBU: An activist has called upon the Education Ministry to set up a special committee tasked with studying and reporting on the level of delinquency among school students.
In proposing this, Malaysia Crime Prevention Foundation ( MCPF) senior vice- chairman Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye stresses that such move is necessary in enabling the authorities to gauge the seriousness of juvenile delinquency and also students’ involvement in drugs, crimes and other social issues such as truancy, underage smoking, bullyism and gangsterism. On the suggested special committee, he believes that it should comprise experts in the relevant fields who can comprehend the situation fully and produce practical and long-term solutions to problems.
Lee further suggests that the special committee should examine and review the Education Act 1996 (Act 550) and other regulations towards assessing and determining whether they are still relevant and able to address the current challenges regarding juvenile delinquency.
“It seems that there is an emerging pattern of aggressive behaviour among youths in Malaysia but unfortunately, there is insufficient data on how serious it is.
“We often read about student’s delinquency but we don’t really know how serious the problem is and its implication on the future of the students.
“To enable us to fully understand the problem and its causes, a study has to be done to look at the seriousness of the problem,” he said in a statement issued by the MCPF yesterday. Lee pointed out that in many instances, heads of school and the administration would ‘sweep such problems under the carpet’ – all for the sake of protecting the good name of their respective institutions.
“The subject of delinquency has existed for a long time. Violence by young people on young people has been happening for some time, but it is seen to be rising now, partly due to wide media coverage.”
Based on findings by child and youth psychology experts, Lee said today’s children ‘lacked positive adult role models at home and at school’ – the youngsters tend to emulate aggressive behaviour including that of their parents and other members of the communities that they live in, or imitate what they see on social media.
He believed that such problem could also be linked to the rising mental health illness in the country – the National Health and Morbidity Survey 2015 estimated that 4.2 million Malaysians aged 16 and above were suffering from mental problems.
In this regard, Lee opined that it would be appropriate for the government to set up a special committee to study the problems arising from and surrounding juvenile delinquency and have them analysed so that the authorities could identify the causes, examine the contributing factors and produce concrete and feasible solutions to address them.
“The outcome of the study can be used by the special committee to propose suitable actions to be taken to help safeguard the interest of the students and also look into the weaknesses of our education system, particularly with regard to school management,” he pointed out.