The Role
of Vandalism in Society Today
Vandalism
is causing thousands upon thousands of pounds worth of damage. There are
reasons why this petty criminal acts occur but I personally believe that the
main reason for it is because there isn’t enough to do in the evenings to keep
today’s youth interested. But this is where my argument for better activities
takes a twist. For example in my village a youth centre was set up so that kids
could go out in the evenings and their parents or guardians wouldn’t be worried
about what they were up to. They knew they were safe. This youth centre was
soon taken advantage of. The little troublemakers climbed on to the roof of the
centre and on to one of the organiser’s cars, damaging it. I do not agree with
this lack of total disrespect and ungratefulness. Personally this is not what
my group of friends and I do in the evenings. We’ll quite often go out or play
a few games of pool or watch a video but most importantly, we enjoy ourselves
without breaking the law. Vandalism costs money that could be spent on better
facilities for the youth instead of paying for the damaged property. This
starts people asking, why bother spending money on ungrateful people who don’t
respect things done for their benefit?
My argument also depends on what age this petty vandalism
occurs at most, or what sort of an area these kids live in. Quite a few of my
friends can drive so I can usually get around, for example to the cinema or
bowling or whatever we choose to do. But not all of the young vandals have
access to lifts with drivers with licences, this can sometimes lead to stealing
cars and eventually to destroying public property for ‘fun’ because of the main
factor which feeds this process, boredom.
Summing
up the argument, the more bored the vandals get, the more dangerous and extreme
the vandalism gets. This scares people of all ages from going out at night even
in to their own village as these troublemakers can be frightening and
unsettling. Unfortunately it is becoming a lot more common and innocent
people’s safety is at risk, maybe, more importantly, a divide becomes obvious
between those who have savoury and interesting things to do and between those
who become so bored that they have to resort to ruining things for others.
People become reluctant to put money into funding for children who will just
waste the money by basically, abusing it and turning to violence, vandalism and
drugs. And you can see their point, why waste money on the ungrateful? But what
other choices are there?