Chapter 01 Thesis background

Thesis Background

Figure 1.1: Definition of youth

Figure 1.2: The raise of Juvenile Delinquency in Malaysia from 2014 to 2018 Source: Prison Department of Malaysia

1.1 Youth are the force of our future society

According to the World Health Organization (2018), youth as a person aged between 15 and 24. They are an important source of inspiration for the future. In just a short period, they will become the leaders of our societies, businesses and nations (The Globalist, 2002).

Youth is a stage of human development from puberty to adulthood. Hence, it is a critical stage of human development as it is involved in their physical, cognitive, and psychosocial development throughout their lifetime (Marluci Menezes et al., 2019). During the period of puberty, youth can explore their own identities as individuals within communities and society. Socioenvironmental impacts are playing an essential role in providing positive youth development physically.

However, the problem of juvenile delinquency is reported to be on the rise from time to time. The involvement of youth in delinquency is an act of risky behaviours that threatens the well being of families and communities (Jessor, 1998). The unsupervised youth are at risk for becoming crime victims, or engaging in other risky behaviour during the hours after school (Newman, S. A., Fox, J. A., Flynn, E. A., & Christeson, W. 2000).

Figure 1.3: Local community disorganisation

Figure 1.4: Urban restriction on youth’s spatial freedom

Figure 1.5: Youth are excluded from the dominant public space through controls, afforded only with “leftover” spaces (Childress, 2004).

1.2 Juvenile delinquency as a symptom of community disorganization

Weak social connections within the neighbourhood are linked to higher juvenile delinquency rates because they lead to social disorganisation. On the contrary, the lack of bonding among residents in helping each other regulate youths’ behaviour in the neighbourhood is part of the community disorganisation that results in the youth being unsupervised or overlooked, then involves in conflicts with others. Hence, low levels of informal social control create a high tendency of marginalised youth in engaging criminal activity. Urban public space had become their second place in the daily living environment. Although public space plays a vital role in youth’s cognitive, social development and well-being, youth appropriation of public space is usually seen in particularly charged ways, attributing these public spaces a sense of difference with adult’s space (Lieberg, 1995). Gahill (1990) stated that some view youth in public spaces as a form of resistance to adult power and others as a threat to public order. Curfew laws limit the use of urban public spaces by youth, and such exclusion influences youth development. Young people are seemingly invisible in the urban landscape (Travlou et al., 2008). Youth have no obvious right to spaces of their own (P. E. Owens, 2002).

1.3 The Causal Loop

In general, the role of public spaces is changing from previous decades. The public spaces have no longer built for spontaneous social meetings (P. E. Owens, 2002). Most of our social gatherings are more likely to exist at coffee

shops, supermarkets, and shopping malls. Public spaces are instead designed as transitional spaces to support specific activities such as transportation. However, youth still need public space to be served as social gathering spaces. Some researchers stated that public spaces are the only places where youth can claim themselves (P. E. Owens, 2002). Larson & Richards (1993) and Nightingale & Wolverton (1993) found that youth must stay alone comfortably to use their free time productively, construct their self-identity and self-esteem, and become productive members society. Youth need to get together with peers to socialise to form their self-identity, self-esteem, and social competence (P. E. Owens, 2002). Hence, public places provide important venues for such activities. An appropriate public space within the urban neighbourhood is vital in helping youth to meet these developmental challenges. However, most of the youth today are facing challenges and difficulties in accessing urban public space. They are often the victims of spatial, social restrictions that limit their ability to explore and be themselves in the local community. They often have nowhere to go, where they often come into conflict with other groups (Lieberg, 1995). Rather than keeping youth safe and away from public space, it works as a broken-window policing, which increases the possibilities for youth in engaging risky behaviours at unsecured or overlooked places. They are excluded from the dominant public space through access limitation and rules, afforded only with “leftover” spaces. It can be emotionally traumatic and leads to physical confrontations or potentially ignite a cycle of incarceration at an early age (Wolff, N., & Shi, J., 2012). The unsupervised youth are at risk of becoming crime victims or engaging in other risky (Newman et al., 2000). Lacking enough public spaces for young people to hang out and socialise with peers create a damaging impact on youth development.

Moreover, the youth justice had slowly become one of our standard on defining the youth. The age of criminal responsibility had indirectly reflected the public spectacles in perceiving the role of youth in our society. Unsupervised young people who did get involved in the criminal activities that lead them towards the justice system were sometimes provided with court-ordered interventions depending on the court’s level of offence and disposition. As they are young offenders, they were allowed to correct their aggressive behaviours through the reformation. Delinquency is specifically used to describe youth’s antisocial behaviours considered unlawful in Malaysia (Abdullah et al., 2015). From a legal perspective, the age group was mainly used to define Juvenile Delinquency in Malaysia (Kassim, 2006). According to the Prison Act 1995, a juvenile was described as a prisoner between 14 and 21. They will either be detained in prisons or received reformation programs in Henry Gurney School. On the contrary, the young offender’s criminal responsibility is

Figure 1.6: The age of criminal responsibility under Juvenile Justice in Malaysia.

Figure 1.7: The existing intervention approach for ar-risk youth reformation

Figure 1.8: The existing prevention approach for ar-risk youth reformation started at ten years old till 18 years old under The Child Act 2001 and The Child Protection Act 1991. Thus, from a legal perspective, juveniles’ definition can be described as a group of young people under the age of 21 years old and have criminal responsibility at the age of 10. The Prison Department of Malaysia has developed and implemented a rehabilitation module that provides attitude building, knowledge, and skills development as the main objectives (Kassim, 2006). Youth is being tried to be changed and shaped by adults into productive members of society. It ensures that the juveniles can be rehabilitated to be expected individuals again (Kassim, 2006). On the other hand, the prevention approaches such as positive youth development programs provided by the community organisations usually target unprivileged young people who are perceived to be the greatest threat to communities or the most susceptible to getting involved in criminal justice social services systems (McDaniel, 2017). Thus, these youth are deemed ‘at-risk’ by providing opportunities for them to learn self-confidence and resiliency to “transition successfully into adulthood” (Kreager, 2008) without getting involved in the criminal justice system.

Both approaches sent a message to youth that they are feared and expected to make a poor decision. Both directions assume youth themselves should be changed, rather than the oppressive environments they live in (Ginwright & Cammarota, 2002). The existing initiatives lack addressing the underlying factors associated with why youth make these poor decisions. Then, youth is targeted to be transformed, but the environment. It was merely up to adults in positions of authority to guide youth down a more productive path.

The media create perceptions of juvenile delinquency through the optional angle of stories that side with the powerful and privileged. Images of youth forwarded by the media prompt and reinforce those images. They are often presented negatively by unfavourable articles

Figure 1.9: Stigmatisation on youth which portrayed negatively by media and popular press. in the popular press and political discourse. Thus, the numerous deviant labels attributed to youth create a skewed vision that may lead to other abnormal behaviour (Pickard & Pickard, 2020).

Consequently, young people feel less inclined to partake in law-abiding behaviour, having been categorised, and embraced the concept of an ‘outsider’ (Creaney, 2012). Thus, young people are marginalised, representing the class biases in youth crime construction in contemporary societies (Pickard & Pickard, 2020). Young people are not merely forgotten in our cities, rather than being actively rejected by public space settings and only afforded with the urban “leftover” space. Whether they are viewed as nuisances or criminal threats, young people are often the victims of spatial, social restrictions that limit their ability to explore and be themselves in the local community. The tangible impact and intangible impact had become a causal loop in our living environment, affecting the social rights of youth within their local community and daily lifestyle.

1.4 The Problem Statement

Young people experience difficulties and challenges to conceive a community without a direct connection among peers and without a place allowing such social interactions (Cicognani et al., 2015). They are excluded from the dominant public space through access limitation and rules, afforded only with “leftover” spaces. It can be emotionally traumatic and leads to physical confrontations or potentially ignite a cycle of incarceration at an early age. Therefore, this study explores the possibilities of reframing the social networking between youth and local society with “leftover” space revitalisation in building communication channels to activate a good neighbourhood.