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28 March 2024

Juvenile delinquency on the rise in UAE

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By Staff

The number of teen agers involved in crime in the UAE surged by nearly 32 per cent in 2009 and this should prompt efforts to deal with the problem of juvenile delinquency, a prominent social expert has said.

While dealing with violence – that has spread among teenagers recently – there should be a difference between occasional squabbles among peers or school mates and criminal violent acts punishable by law, said Abdullah Al Awadi, a consultant at the government-run National Human Resources Development and Recruitment Authority

He said the problem could be tackled through coordinated efforts by families, schools and media institutions in the country.

“Our concern here is acts of violence and counter-violence they trigger. Statistics released by the UAE Ministry of Social Affairs and the Family and Juveniles Prosecution in Dubai show that the number of juveniles who committed robbery and assault in the country, and those who have been housed in the UAE’s five juvenile care centers, reached 848 in 2009, increasing 32 percent compared to 2008,” Awadi said in a study published this week by the Abu Dhabi-based Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR).

“This indicates the extent of the problem and necessitates stepped up efforts to find a solution in the interest of public security. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has already taken steps in this direction by rehabilitating UAE juvenile delinquents. It provided jobs to some and helped others to continue their education, which would ultimately ensure that they take part in community building efforts.”

Awadi, author of several books on the UAE society, cited data by the Ministry of Social Affairs showing that the five care centers in the UAE received 683 juveniles in 2009 while the Juvenile Rehabilitation Centre in Dubai received 165 citizen juveniles during the same year, compared to 472 in 2008.

The figures also revealed that 258 of the juveniles registered by the ministry in 2009, or 38 percent of the total number, were born to national parents while juveniles with a UAE national father and a foreign mother amounted to 425, a ratio of 62 percent of the total housed in care centers.

“This indicates the critical role played by families in relation to juvenile delinquency as their ratio from mixed marriages is double the number from marriages between nationals,” he said.

He quoted a study by the Family and Juveniles Prosecution (FJP) in Dubai showing that 342 juveniles registered in 2009 included 165 citizens and about 50 percent of the total number of registered juveniles was involved in 250 cases, mostly first-degree assault and robbery related crimes.

FJP Statistics also showed that 52 citizen juveniles involved in these cases were born to foreign mothers, while others were born to fathers having more than one wife. “This is another proof of the significance of parents’ nationality with regard to juvenile delinquency,” Awadi said.

“The family undoubtedly plays a crucial role in inculcating social righteousness among the juvenile population. Family is the primary mold in which a child is brought up and it plays a decisive role in protecting children from distractions. No social research or study defies this conclusion except in societies where children live independent of their families from an early age.”

Besides, secondary factors such as bad company or modern methods of committing crimes support the juveniles’ tendency to adopt delinquent and criminal attitudes, according to Awadi.

But he noted that the more firm the primary nurturing children get the more resistant they become to these external factors.

“Hence, in order to reduce verbal, moral and physical violence that is often associated with certain juvenile crimes, the family should help teenagers cope up with that critical age through flexible and sound instruction and counseling.

Indeed, the biggest part of the solution lies in the hands of the family.”

Awadi said that the phenomenon of juvenile delinquency was not so widespread in the UAE even in the recent past.

“The dominant social traditions commanded that youngsters must show respect to elders and problems must be solved either within the family or between various families.

This was partly due to the cohesion that existed in the UAE as the nationals used to treat their neighbors’ children like their own,” he said.

“They even used to rebuke their neighbors’ children for misconduct without embittering the parent. A lot of problems used to get solved that way. There is now a need to revisit these social values.”

Awadi said schools in the UAE should also play the same role they used to play earlier. Schools, he added, can help inculcate good values among youngsters and minors by keeping them busy with useful activities during their free time, especially during long summer months.

“Schools should be made second home for the students. Unfortunately, this is not the case these days. The various means of entertainment available to young people hardly teach them the right values,” he said.

 Instead they distract them from sound principles of education that may have protected them from slipping into misconduct. The media should also play a greater role in countering this phenomenon by spreading awareness among juveniles and teenagers……. this is important because often the media’s negative influence – especially related to temptation and desire – opens the door for teenagers to go astray.”

Awadi said the best way to counter juvenile delinquency is by managing the family, school and the media environments.
“ This should be done in such a way that protects teenagers and instills in them a genuine sense of social values. Families, educational institutions and those running the media must synergize their efforts to find an acceptable way that help the authorities perform the task of combating the problem of juvenile delinquency,” he said.

“It is indeed a social problem that needs social rather than a security solution. Such coordination can help reduce the social cost of this problem and bring down the number of juvenile crime in the country.”