by Samuel Sarpong, Ghana, September 1997
THEME = YOUTH
Since 1995, a number of serious robberies have been committed by secondary school students throughout the country. People are bewildered by what's happening because, after all, these students are still young. "No one ever thought that students could handle guns at that tender age (16). What's got into their heads?" (Some of the hold-ups involved students possessing fire- arms. These have since confessed that they have been influenced by the action-packed films they watch).
Joseph Aidoo and Antwi Danso are both young people who ran away from school in 1995. They raided a shop, fired at the shop assistant, then tied him up before leaving with their booty. Why did they do it? "It was all a practical joke", they said. "We were just copying what we saw on videos".
Yet people do wonder about the motives for this crime. It seems that the two students had left their campus and spent three nights watching films in a bid to find out about the latest ways of carrying out a robbery. Later, they secured a gun and then reconnoitred the area before they struck.
The students were arrested and brought to trial before an Accra court. Instead of the mandatory custodial sentence of life imprisonment for armed robbery, which most people expected, the court placed them on probation because of their young ages.
Currently, three students are also standing trial in the Central Region for attempting to strangle a taxi driver. The students had flagged down the driver and asked him to take them back to their school. Passing through an outlying area, they tried to strangle him. The driver eventually became unconscious and he was left to die. When he regained consciousness, he realised that his taxi had been taken away.
Eventually the police caught the students, and they are currently on trial.
There's another case pending in which four students from one of Ghana's prestigious schools, Achimota School, recently embarked on a similar criminal adventure.
Two "kept cave" at the shop entrance whilst the others engaged the shop assistant in conversation, under the pretext of buying some items from the shop. When the assistant bent down to get some of the items, he was hit on the head with a stone whilst the others gagged him with sticky tape. They escaped with their booty back to school.
Unfortunately for them, one of them left his school identity card behind, so the police were able to trace him and this led to the arrest of the others.
One striking feature of such juvenile crimes is that those who commit them are very well off, and certainly don't need to turn to a life of crime!
Mr. A.Y. Anyamoe, is an acting Probation Officer with the Ministry of Social Welfare. He says: "It's not out of want that these boys embark on such criminal adventures. All they're doing is copying what they see on videos and the TV". Mr Justice R.K.Apaloo who has tried some of these cases, says: "Some of these boys are over-pampered and live in luxurious surroundings".
The list of these juvenile crimes is endless and assuming alarming proportions. Although statistics are not readily available, the numerous cases reported in the media are a pointer to this.
Ms. Phyllis Amofa is a teacher. She says: "Some years back, juvenile crimes were limited to truancy, smoking and stealing at school. But recently, crimes ranging from armed robbery, forgery and attempted murder have become commonplace. People just don't known why all these crimes are taking place".
Do the root causes lie in the disintegration of the social fabric of society as well as the breakdown of discipline in schools?
"Discipline is virtually non-existent in our schools", says John Yeboah, a parent. But Ms.Amofa thinks the blame should be laid squarely on parents, whom, she says, tend to over- protect and over-pamper their children. "Parents even go into the schools and berate teachers for disciplining their children. In such a situation, what do you expect the teacher to do? The shaping of the moral fibre of the youth in leading upright, disciplined and dignified lives, cannot be the sole responsibility of teachers, even though by their training they are duty-bound to infuse sound and cherished social values in the youth."
END