Youth crime and the rehabilitation of youth caught up in criminal activities: the case of Alice town and surrounding areas

iv ABSTRACT The nucleus of this study is youth crime and the rehabilitation of the youth caught up in criminal activities. Conducted in Alice in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, this study scrutinized youth crime prevention techniques utilized in Alice and surrounding areas, and it established their efficacy. The study investigated the elements of rehabilitation available for young offenders in this area. With the social control theory, the structural strain theory and the risk-needs-responsivity guiding this study, the findings revealed that loss of control by conventional institutions, strains that individuals experience and inadequate rehabilitation are determinants of youth crime in and around Alice. With lack of resources as well as inconsistent and inadequate application of these programs, efficacy in minimizing and preventing youth crime proves to be low. At some point in the past, communities had effective diversion programs for the youth but these were no longer practiced. Findings revealed that the root causes of youth crime in this area include poor economic background, youth unemployment, broken families, peer pressure and substance abuse among other causes. Prevention programs do not correspond to the actual causes of crime, and, as such, youth crime prevention programs will not achieve efficacy until they address root causes. On the other hand, rehabilitation is of great importance to achieving minimal youth crime rates. The findings revealed that imprisonment is the only source of rehabilitation for young offenders in Alice, and that it yields positive results, albeit for a short period. This is due to neglect of the causes of crime and utilizing general prevention and rehabilitation. The environment into which the young offenders are placed after v socioeconomic status, unemployment, peer pressure and drug abuse. These result in strains that drive young people to committing crime; consequently, engagement in youth crime leads to loss of social control and it becomes an on-going cycle. The risk-needs-responsivity model emphasizes constructing rehabilitative treatment based on the risk the individual poses to society, including the likelihood to reoffend, the offender‟s needs that might lead the individual to deviant ways of achieving them, and the environment into which the individual is exposed. The study adopted a mixed-methods approach. To obtain qualitative data, the researcher made use of 5 focus group discussions each comprising at least 6 members of the community, in-depth interviews with 15 young offenders who had experience with the justice system, and an in-depth interview with the chief community policing officer of the Alice town police department. For the attainment of quantitative data, questionnaires were administered to 100 community members with 61 usable questionnaires upon retrieval. Qualitative data was analysed using the thematic analysis technique while the quantitative data was analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) software. In view of the theoretical framework, weak social bonds and ties to family, school and society at large play a role in the engagement of youth in criminal activities. This spawns a loss of control to some extent and, due to this, individuals will experience strain as they have abandoned genuine ways of attaining needs and achieving goals, in this case adopting new illegitimate ways of meeting their needs. This calls for rehabilitation that is tailored specifically for the offender: treatment that addresses the risk the offender poses to society; needs of the offender that may lead to reoffending; the social context and the role it is anticipated to play once the offender gets out of rehabilitation. The key is who to target, what to target and how to target it. vi The study concludes that in order to make crime prevention techniques effective, the first step is addressing the root causes of youth crime given that general techniques have been used and indicate no efficacy due to the neglecting of the social context when arriving at problem solving techniques. These become unbeneficial as they attempt to control crime without getting rid of the causes of crime. Rehabilitation should be directly proportional to offender risk and needs. Specific rehabilitation that is determined by offender risk and needs should be practiced for the achievement of long-term rehabilitation