Absence of parental care and monitoring and poverty are driving children into criminal activities, steering up the rate of juvenile delinquency in the country.
“I left home in Dinajpur at the age of 10. I had a fight with my mother. I was outraged and so I ran away and took shelter at the Parbotipur railway station. I lived there for five months surrounded by drug peddlers, thieves and hijackers. Leaving Parbotipur I went to Daulatdia, however, the scenario was no different there. Eventually I could not help myself but to get involved with illegal activities. Two years later, I came to Dhaka with my master,” said a boy aged around 14, who works as a drug peddler at capital’s Chandrima Uddyan.
A sex worker of around the same age at capital’s Suhrawardi Park said: “As I was the eldest daughter in the family my mother used to insist me to go outside and get money somehow. She was highly annoyed with me. So I used to go out often in search of work and eventually got involved in sex trade.”
Currently she is living with her parents.
She said: “Those who supply clients to us are of the same age as ours. These pimps are also involved in the drug selling.”
“However, they are just the frontiers. The ultimate carriers of the unscrupulous business run the deal from behind the curtains. The peddlers get commission of only Tk10 for selling each unit,” she claimed.
Talking with 25 drug peddlers and 10 pickpockets, all aged under 18, it was found that 82% of them considered their activities to be “crimes,” while the rest did not.
Eighty percent of the children, who were engaged in pick pocketing, said they did the job individually, not in groups. Most of them carried the acts during night. Some of them also expressed the desire to become terrorists one day.
On the basis of studies conducted over children engaged in crimes and years of experiences of working in the field, experts say they were introduced to criminal activities by none other than their parents. This was not the case with the lower income group only.
Parents belonging to the upper strata of the society were also responsible for their children’s addiction to drugs. They observed that most of the teenagers fell prone to drug addiction because their parents provided them with excessive pocket money. The parents of this group rarely bothered to spend quality time with their children, as they were too busy with work.
Nayeem Wahra, a children’s rights specialist said choked by poverty many parents forcefully engaged their children in work outside home to get an addition in the family income.
This often leaves the child with no other option but to avail means of earning which are not based on any ethical ground. This is how they fall prey to criminality and the rate of juvenile delinquency rises up, he opined.
“We cannot solely blame the parents for this. First we have to ensure that the families become self-reliant in terms of income,” he added,
Most of the time, the adolescents engage in violence out of sheer curiosity and due to lack of foresight. They also get involved to test their physical strength, endurance and to meet the desire for adventure.
Wahida Banu, executive director of Aparajeyo Bangladesh, a non-government organisation, told: “If one goes by record, you will find 75% of the children in the country have been brought up in grave financial crisis.”
Taking advantage of their poor economic conditions, some unscrupulous gangsters engage them in criminal activities.
She added: “Poverty brings them to the roads. We are trying our best to bring them to the path of correction but after being released from shelter homes like rehabilitation centers and juvenile correctional centers, they take the same path again as we are not providing them with any alternative way of income.”
Noted psychologist Dr Mehtab Khanam observes that children by nature are creatures who need nurturing to turn into adults through learning and gathering experiences in life.
The manner in which children grow up and the kind of things they observe in their surroundings influence the foundation of their principles that they eventually form about life.
She added that absence of strong parental control and lack of opportunity to get proper education are compelling the juveniles to engage in criminal activities.