Security and crime urgent measures: substantive solutions

The problem of crime and violence requires, on the one hand, urgent measures that respond to events of great public connotation that have happened in recent days and that are added to those that happen daily and that seem to be becoming something normal in our country.
There is a consensus that options related to repression and the use of police force are important resources to reduce the crime that manifests itself with an increase in violent crime.
As, in many shocking problems, one sees that institutions are getting used to acting on the ultimate consequences and. rarely, on the causes that are at the base of them, even though the social sciences and, why not say it, common sense, realize that, especially, in the case of crime its generation is multicausal.
Some time ago, the press has published the life story of the criminal who, supposedly, shot a journalist, a sequence of street life, of informality, with a mother head of household street vendor, with entrances and exits of programs of the service of childhood and schools, in short, with a socialization of the street, making the crime a habitual conduct. This life trajectory, which is repeated in thousands of cases, accounts for the failure of programs that should provide development opportunities to children exposed to risk factors.
Many children, many girls and adolescents in vulnerable situations are in educational establishments where they could have the possibility of building a life project that leads them to a personal development away from disruptive behaviors, however the efforts of teachers and education assistants do not always achieve this goal because there are limitations that prevent it.
On the one hand, there is an overstigmatization of disruptive children and youth from more deprived sectors, which affects the imagination of some education professionals, who believe that by making use of sanctions and the application of regulations they can have good results with them and, unfortunately, the most predictable product of this strategy will be the expulsion of the “problematic” student. Most likely, the professionals who act in this line have weaknesses in the management of tools to address this type of population and it is necessary to reinforce both in initial training, as in the updating of knowledge, aspects such as emotional education, psychosocial reality and, above all, when there are already problematic consumption of substances, access tools of the Transtheoretical Model of Change (motivational interviewing for example).
On the other hand, along with hopeless professionals, there are some who have the capacity to receive, who are prone to get involved in the family histories of these children and earn respect as significant adults who at the turn of some years are recognized by young people who have achieved a professional degree, have established themselves in a trade and have formed a family group, permeated by the affection and values they experienced in the school space.
I think it would be very important that the new education authorities and those of the government, concerned with the prevention of crime, will consider the educational variables that can help change the bad prognosis that is made today on part of the child and youth population and that, from a more systemic perspective, the institutions that train teachers, consider aspects necessary to act in the face of the reality that worries today.
Finally, although it does not sound politically correct, I believe that without neglecting the concern for the victims of violence and crime, we must reinforce in our society a view that these children and young people are people with the right to have dreams and to realize them and that we do not have to read or listen to the words of a psychologist who, faced with the death of one of her students in a criminal act, A few years ago, he said, “I know he didn’t do good things. But for me a scourge did not die: my student died. The one I loved so much and with it we tried so much . . . But we couldn’t. Failed. And I’m sorry.”
 
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Original source in Spanish

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