Why are children prepared to kill in the UK?

[pauljaw]

How can children be taught not to kill? Ridiculous question. But it seems the moral compass of children in the UK has drifted wildly awry. What can be done about it?

[alexdocherty]

I think the UK, like much of the world, is losing societal structure. The reason murder is increasing so sporadically is because the punishments are much more leniant than they used to be.
In my opinion, the only way which people will be persuaded to stop killing is by reintroducing the death penalty.

[alexdocherty]

Also, it's in human nature, like most animals, to kill. That'll never change. The only way to stop people killing is to make them not-human.

[McCulloch]

Why are children prepared to kill in the UK?
How can children be taught not to kill? Ridiculous question. But it seems the moral compass of children in the UK has drifted wildly awry. What can be done about it?

Is there any objective evidence that children in the UK are exhibiting increasing criminal behaviour?

[alexdocherty]

Well you could call it a moral panic by the media, but crime rates have generally risen in the UK over the years, and most of the crime for males is committed at 18-21 and for girls 14-16. We just did it in sociology so the evidence is in police crime statistics, but there's always a dark figure of crime to take into account also.

[pauljaw]

Why are children prepared to kill in the UK?
How can children be taught not to kill? Ridiculous question. But it seems the moral compass of children in the UK has drifted wildly awry. What can be done about it?

Is there any objective evidence that children in the UK are exhibiting increasing criminal behaviour?

I heard a criminologist on the news yesterday, a professor, she said the rise in killing began in the mid 1990's and that since then the numbers have increased and that the ages of those killing have fallen, So, yes, there are more children killing now.

[pauljaw]

This is a longer thread which i posted in a music forum which I wrote trying to look at some of the causes:

Is music partly responsible for breeding child killers in the UK?

I dont think it is solely responsible, but it may be part of the problem:

Hip-hop - Glamorising gangs. glamorising crime, glamorising violence, glamorising guns.
Also video games and TV, but esp video games training people to use guns, glamorising violence, making us see violence as entertainment. Its fun to kill people!!. Made GTA a best-seller.

And some other influences:

The internets making crime acceptable its OK to steal music; films ;software; Logic 8 just TAKE whatever you want.. And the anonymity of the internet allows disrespect to grow. Read the comments section on You Tube. A culture of disrespect. A slow-burning corrosive influence. Except now it is serious. Its out there, and people are getting killed, and some children are doing the killing.

So, have technology and the entertainment industry been training some children to become killers? In the UK this did not happen a few years ago. Something has changed, and children have started killing each other, and in some cases adults who challenge them.

There is now a climate of fear in society. Adults are unable to discipline children who are sometimes living wild on the streets . Here in the UK, if kids are making a noise outside your house, you might just have to live with it; to ask them to quieten down could mean you risking your own life.

Some parents are not parenting effectively, and they not teaching children to respect themselves, each other and people in general.

Drugs are also part of the problem, but these have been around since the 1960"s. 1970's 1980's; 1990's - children didn't kill then, So, what has changed?

Pre 1950's , church values still pervaded society especially -"Love your neighbour as yourself", and "Do unto others as you would want to be done to yourself". These were unwritten common sense values. And still are for many. But for some parents and their children What?

Just some thoughts..... Do you agree? Has the entertainment industry, among other influences, contributed to our current climate? Is this blown out of all proportion, or has there been a serious change in our society? And how can this be turned around for future generations? How can society change to be a good and healthy place for children to grow up in? What is society going to be like for future generations?

And can we do anything to change things for the better? If so, what and how?

[alexdocherty]

In response to your first proposal: music, I don't think it's specifically the music which is to blame, but the media's representation of hip-hop and gangstas.
The way they're portrayed to be superior with their hegemonic behaviour influences youths watching to be the same, or risk being out-casted.
For the second proposal: technology, we live in a post-modern society in the UK, where literally everywhere there is media. Mobiles, laptops and other technologies are what makes this media available to us. So technology boosts the media's presentation of gangstas and hip-hop.
In response to your Christian argument - I do not think this is a bad thing. The eroding of Christian power has led to a greater freedom. Homosexuals, for example, have more power in society and are protected against the bigoted Christian views against them.

I simply think in the UK there is too much glamorisation of negative images, such as violence.

As for a solution, I don't think it can be 'fixed' easily. The youths who are behaving negatively today will likely pass their values and beliefs down to their children, who will act in the same way.
In my personal opinion, I think the way to solve the issue is for the media to recognise that their portrayal of negative things is causing problems in the UK, and they need to think less about the money they're earning and more about the damage they're inflicting on the country.

[C-Nub]

Hip-hop - Glamorising gangs. glamorising crime, glamorising violence, glamorising guns.
Also video games and TV, but esp video games training people to use guns, glamorising violence, making us see violence as entertainment. Its fun to kill people!!. Made GTA a best-seller.

This is completely unsupported by any scientific study or inquery, and is the same sort of Bullshit that people have been spreading since the very first bit of Hip-Hop started to make it into main stream culture. I did a lot of research for this for an article I wrote for the Geezer Gamers, a video-game group of some 7000 members, give or take. In most of the modern world (The UK, Canada, the United States and the Major European Nations (sorry Iceland)) crime rates amongst young people have, up until recently (and only in the UK, that) been dropping very steadily. Violent Crime especially, being rape, murder, armed robbery, assault and battery have all dropped significantly for well over a decade in most of these nations, despite the increasing popularity of violent games and music. Blaming something as wide spread and hip-hop for something as isolated as a single countries increasing violence is absurd, unsupported, alarmist and republican. It's cultural intolerance, it's completely unsupported by an of the known facts, and it comes from fear and a lack of understanding, not from any real, rational thinking.

The internets making crime acceptable its OK to steal music; films ;software; Logic 8 just TAKE whatever you want.. And the anonymity of the internet allows disrespect to grow. Read the comments section on You Tube. A culture of disrespect. A slow-burning corrosive influence. Except now it is serious. Its out there, and people are getting killed, and some children are doing the killing.

...what? The internet is nothing if not a breeding ground for NON-Violent crime. Think about it. First off, crime requires motive. If someone is a serious internet criminal, then they're downloading protected content (games, books, movies, and software) and selling / distributing it. Distributing it doesn't require any kind of human contact at all, and greatly reduces the chance for violence. Selling it means that you're offering burned DVD's for cash money on the street corner, and are more likely to be robbed than to rob someone. As for the 'disrespect', it is fueled by the courage one finds in anonimity, and does nothing to increase the amount of bravery that one might find in real life. People on the internet are brave and disrespectful BECAUSE they're on the internet, not because it taught them so, but because it is the vehicle that enables them to get away with it. (And if these are the kids being shot, even better.)

So, have technology and the entertainment industry been training some children to become killers? In the UK this did not happen a few years ago. Something has changed, and children have started killing each other, and in some cases adults who challenge them.

No. What you're talking about, the idea that someone could take what they've learned in a video-game or heard in a song and act it out in real life is referred to as "disassociatative disorder" and is one of the hallmarks of scitzophrenia (which I probably mispelled). This sort of behavior requires brain damage or at least malfunction, and is not the sort of thing normal people can do, as we are mostly capable of discerning fiction from fact.

There is now a climate of fear in society. Adults are unable to discipline children who are sometimes living wild on the streets . Here in the UK, if kids are making a noise outside your house, you might just have to live with it; to ask them to quieten down could mean you risking your own life.

And from whence does this climate of fear come? Where does it originate? Is it from the nightly news and the speeches of the politicians, which talk about the danger of terror attacks, the danger of muslims, the danger of late nights and unlocked cars and teenage daughters alone on the streets, or does it come from songs wherein a 'musician' with an eighth grade education tells you to 'smack that bitch up.'

[Fallibleone]

For balance: I believe kids get a bad press.There are violent ones, always have been. I don't accept that it's worse now. My opinion is that crimes are being reported more, and incidents such as 'happy slapping' come complete with a visual record of the event. Hard to get out of that.

On the issue of the reintroduction of capital punishment being the only forseeable way of stopping violent crime - you only have to look at the US to see that the threat doesn't work. Execution of adults is bad enough in my eyes. How one would justify its use on kids I don't know.