MEDIA RELEASE
4 APRIL 2006
Media and Lack of Discipline to blame for crime concerns
The Police figures released yesterday show a disturbing trend. Violent crime is up 6.9% (16 a day in Wellington), sexual
offences increased by 200, grievous assaults, homicides, intimidation and threats were all up by more than 11%, while
abnormal sex and immoral behaviour nearly doubled!
The standard response is to increase the Police force. This may increase the resolution rate but will not deal with the
root causes of this type of behaviour.
The Police have identified that the “baby blip”of the late 80’s to 1990 means an increase of children flowing into the
prime criminal age of 15 to 24.
Why should this concern the Police and citizens alike? There are 2 reasons.
These youth entered a system of education and society where discipline and responsibility were replaced by the
politically correct nonsense of children’s rights. It is significant that corporal punishment in schools stopped in 1990
also! We now have a generation of children who have been victims of a social experiment of how best to raise our kids.
And it continues with the ideological drive to ban smacking. Youth offending will continue to rise for as long as we
tell them that their rights are more important than their responsibilities, and that there will be no consequences of
any significance for what they do.
The second reason is the sexually charged music, tv, movies and magazines which pushes youngsters (and adults) into
sexual activity, and creates offenders who have no respect for themselves or others. A study published in the April
issue of “Pediatrics”, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics showed that the higher the exposure to sexual
activity in the media, the earlier they became sexually active. We cannot continue to feed our society a diet of violent
and sexually laden movies, tv programmes and music without that behaviour being acted out by impressionable young
people, and adults!
We shouldn’t be surprised by the crime figures –unfortunately!
ENDS