Youth crime Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Youth crime - Essay Example Exaggeration of media stories and incidences often leave both the reporters and the public confused, uneasy and suspicious. Though media entities work hard to generate interest among its viewers and audiences, it is important that they remain focused and disseminate true stories and incidents to the members of the society. Criminal activities associated with young people (17 years and below) include arson, breach of bail, breach of conditional discharge, and breach of statutory order, criminal damage, death or injury by reckless driving, domestic burglary, drug offences, fraud & forgery, motoring offences Non-domestic burglary, public order, racial aggravated offences, robbery , sexual offences, theft and handling , vehicle theft and violence against person. It is not easy for an average person to know whether the media is exaggerating incidences or not. However, exaggeration of media content can be identified through Stanley Cohen’s five pointers and by comparing official sta tistics from government agencies to information contained in media reports. Establishing whether youth crimes are spiraling out of control as reported by the media in the United Kingdom Establishing exaggeration of media reports on youth crimes can be difficult for an average person. ... These five pointers based on moral panic concept would be used to establish whether it is true that youth crime is spiraling out of control in the United Kingdom as portrayed by the media. First, it is good to establish whether the media has inflated youth crime rates (statistics). The media has given prominence to youth crime rates over other equally important happenings in Britain. Though youth crimes are only reported as they happen and do not run longer as compared to other stories, they are put as prominent information. Most media in the United Kingdom exaggerates criminal offences perpetuated by young people by putting youth crimes incidences in more prominent parts of the newspaper or the newscasts. In addition, some media uses age to show the magnitude and scope of crime perpetrators. Four year old children were suspected to be involved with arson, assault, burglary and possessing offensive weapons. Reporting children as perpetrators is hard to believe or imagine. Pickard (20 08) claimed that Britain have experienced alarming increases in publicized knife crimes since 2008. The knife crime stories about latest victims and perpetrators are placed in front pages of the newspapers and headlines in the newscasts. The media constantly remind members of the society on imminent danger they face each day as they leave their houses as young people embrace knives as latest fashion accessory. Figure 1 is a graph showing the number of young people who got involved in criminal offences between the years 2003 to 2010. According to the graph below, the number of young people who got involved in criminal offences increased steadily from 2003 to 2006. After 2006, the number of young people who