GANGSTERISM AMONG TEENAGERS

Gangsterism is a widely known teenage problem around the world.

Although the Malaysian government has tried to curb gangsterism, yet there
are still many cases of gangsterism around the country. The statistical figure
was brought out by Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin during the Parliamentary session
on June 9, 2010 portrays the number of students who involved with
gangsterism. From the figure, it stated that the number of students nearly
doubled since 2005. It begins with 32 cases recorded and the numbers reach
its high peak on 2008 with the value of 81. Although, the number had slightly
decreased to 60 cases in 2009 but the number still considered high compared
to the earlier cases recorded in 2005. There are many factors, that cause
gangsterism to happen between teenagers.
Teenager nowadays lack of focus. I mean that they do not know where
they are heading, whether in the academic or social sense. Therefore, this
gives rise to several problems, mostly gangsterism happens among the
teenagers who involved in sosial ills such as drug addicts, smoking, and
gambling. These teenagers are not bothered about their studies and it is
evident that they are involved in gangsterism. So, who should be blamed for
gangsterism? Do we have to put the lame on the parents, teachers or anyone
else?
One of the factors that cause gangsterism among teenagers is the
individual himself or in the other word is ourselves. We are the ones to be
blamed for gangsterism because we are the ones who decide on how we want
to live our life. We are responsible to manage ourselves. If we discipline
ourselves towards the positive behavior, then we will behave well. We are the
one to choose how we manage our life. In any decision or action that we made,
we have to take full responsibilities of whatever the consequences that we will
have to face due to the decision making. For example, if a friend offer us a
drug and if we have a firm standpoint, then we'll kindly say no to the friend.

Next factor that causes gangsterism among teenagers is the parents.

Nowadays, parents are so busy and they focus more on earning more money.
They are so busy with their job and rarely have time to be with their children at
home. They become workaholic and they are not concerned about their
children needs. They assume that providing their children with materialism is
more than enough but the fact is their children actually need more attention
from their parents. For instance, parents give money and provide car for their
children but the children feel lonely. So, they will do anything to fill in the
emptiness they feel inside. They might be involved in gangsterism to
overcome the loneliness they felt.
Then, peer pressure is the one to be blamed for gangsterism among
teenagers. The teenagers are easily influenced by their friends. When they mix
with the wrong friends, they might be involved in crimes. As friends are among
the closest people to the teenagers, they will eventually be influenced by their
friends. For example, if their friends is a gangster, soon they'll become one.
This is because, their friends might attract them to try something new for them
like gang fights. The teenagers are too young and they have a strong instinct
of wanting to try something new. So, they will follow their friends.
With the rapid increase of this problem, gangsterism can give a lot of
negative impact towards individual, family, and society. In term of individual,
student who involves themselves with gangsterism will face bad
consequences in their life including having a dark future. Thus, their future
might be threatened due to the result of their behavior. Most probably they will
be detained because somehow they able to create chaotic scene in their
surrounding. This will also affect their life as they unable to perform their
study in higher level and they might spend their teenage years in juvenile
school or rehabilitation centre. On the contrary, those with a bright future able
to continue their study while they had wasting their precious life in prison.
In the context of family, parents need to receive the bad treatment as the
result of their children behavior. Most probably, parents might be insulted or
becoming the subject of hatred from people in their surrounding. They might
be blame for what their children had done and through other people eyes they

had to be responsible. Somehow, there are parents who try so hard, in order to
guide their children back to the right path. However, some children are too
stubborn and ignore the advice of their respectful parents. In addition, parents
need to face with reality that their children are not turn into a good person and
turn out differently from what they had expected.
As for society, they will feet insecure and threatened over this matter
because they felt that the surrounding is not the safe place anymore due to the
violent act of gangster. The behavior of gangster might endanger their life
because at some point, gangster can turn out to be a killer and some of them
also fight among each other to show their power. In addition, this kind of
phenomenon also spread widely in school. Johnson and Johnson (2005)
stated that the researchers determined that the alarm about rampant violence
in school is not justified, but concern about the frequency with which
adolescents victimize each other is, even though the victimizations are more
bothersome than injurious. In addition, it had come to the stage where school
compound cannot be considered as a safe place anymore due to the
gangsterism activities that take place in school area. Middleton-Moz and
Zawadski (2002) argue that our own lack of awareness often causes us to be
both deaf and blind to the pain experienced by our nations youth and, as a
result, our young people too often become the prisoners of their sadness and
depression, seeing little possibility for change and no way. Therefore, it show
that our own lack of concern over what had happened make the matter of
gangsterism getting worst until the victim of gangsterism are being abuse
physically and emotionally. Society is no longer felt peace and harmony in the
country which they had resided.
Strict enforcement by the authorities also can solve this gangsterism
problem among teenagers. Nowadays, teenagers seem not to have any feeling
and are frightened of what they are going to do. So, if the authorities let them
know that there are some strict enforcement will be taken towards the guilt of
gangsterism cases, teenagers will think twice when they want to be involved in
gangsterism because they know if they are caught by the authorities, there will
be punishment and strict enforcement waiting for them. In brief, only strict
enforcement by the authorities will make the teenagers feel frightened be

involved in gangsterism. Thus, authorities must play their role in solving this
problem before it gets worse day by day.
School counselors also play an important role to solve gangsterism
problems among teenagers. As we know, teenagers spend their time almost
half of their days in school, so that, if school counselors are playing their role
as instructor, facilitator and also counselor to their students by giving and
organizing some proper and suitable programmes, their students will be more
knowledgeable and have views on bad effects in doing gangsterism activities.
They will be more aware that gangsterism will make them suffer and life as a
student will become worse if they are punished to be expelled from school. In
other words, only school counselors have a big role and carry the
responsibility in creating a good personality in their students characteristics.
The school counselors must keep in touch with their students who are
involved themselves in disciplinary problems because most probably this
students might bring themselves in gangsterism cases too. Besides that, the
school counselors must try to find ways to avoid gangsterism activities to be
happen in their school. To summarize, if the school counselors are always
aware about their students activities, the number of teenagers involved in
gangsterism will be decrease day by day and gangsterism cases can be solved
by the advice and guidance by the school counselors.
In addition, parents play a part in helping their children to choose the
right friends. This is due to the fact that friends play the important role in
moulding one's characters especially among teenagers. A group of good
friends can guide and lead the youth to a better future in their life. Thus,
parents should always keep an eye on who their children's friends are. It
should be better if parents are close to their children too. Parents also play an
important role as it is because parents nowadays are too occupied with their
jobs until they forget to think about their children's needs and feeling. They
tend to have no time to spend with their children. For them, finding money is
an important thing. But to think it carefully, what is the use of your billions of
money if your children are negelcted and do not get parental love from you as
their parents? Besides that, broken family background always gives bad
effects to the teenagers nowadays who involve themselves in gangsterism.

They will feel more comfortable and release tension outside with their friends
by involving in gangsterism rather than in the house by looking at their mother
and father quarreling all the time because of marriage problems. The reason
why parents play an important role to solve this problem is because parents
are the people that are responsible to provide their children with a good
spiritual and moral background. In brief, with enough education of this two
aspects, sure this problem can be solved because their children will think
twice if they want to involve themselves in gangsterism activities because they
know by doing that, their parents will be ashamed to have children like them
and their children know that gansterism will bring bad effects to them.
Influence by mass media should be taken into consideration. Mass
media must know their limits in publishing something. They must be aware of
whatever programmes they want to publish have bad effects or not to the
audience especially teenagers who usually like to imitate the violent action in
the television. Mass media also can help to solve this gangsterism cases by
publishing advertisements on bad effects of gangsterism activities among
teenagers. As a result of this action, Im sure teenagers will keep a far distance
from gangsterism activities and they will totally not have any feelings to be
involved themselves in that bad activities. They will choose to involve
themselves in participating in such a good and beneficial activities like
watching a debate or other programmes that beneficial for their studies
organized by the mass media. In short, we can conclude that mass medias
responsibility is important in order to solve this crucial problem among
teenagers nowadays.
It can be conclude that there is a great necessity to give more attention
towards cases that related with young delinquents who involve themselves in
gangsterism. This problem had to be wisely handled to ensure that their future
will not be ruined due to their involvement in gangsterism. Thus, parents,
government, and society have to play their roles effectively in order to curb the
spreading of gangsterism among school student. With the cooperation from
each member in the country, there is a high possibility that this social illness
will finally found its remedy.
http://viewourperspective.blogspot.com/2010/10/effect-of-gangsterism-towards-society.html