Sometimes, I wonder whom should we be angry at when it concerns issues of social ills such domestic violence and indiscipline in schools. Should the frustration be vented out at the policy makers for their ineptness in tackling problems the way they are supposed to?

Or should the the police, neighbours (in cases of domestic violence) and school heads (for indiscipline problems in school) and parents be held responsible for the decline in conduct and character of our youngsters?

Currently, the most talked about topic concerns juvenile deliquency, especially disciplinary problem in schools. The death of a religious boarding school student, Mohd Farid Ibrahim, 16, has once again opened a can of worms, with questions being asked by one and all on how this incident could actually happen.

The Education ministry's knee-jerk reaction has been to set up a hotline and a special task force to investigate complaints of bullying by students, teachers and parents. Its minister Hishammuddin Hussein said the ministry has been given the go ahead by the Cabinet to call in the police to deal with school bullies and gangsters in schools.

It would do the young minister some good to check on previous reports concerning the issue of indiscipline in schools. The problem is certainly not an overnight concern and had been there during the tenure of Hishammuddin's predecessors.

Back then various suggestions were made on how to tackle social ills in schools. One of the ways was to bring back caning into schools while the other was to empower school heads and discipline teachers with auxilliary powers in dealing with disciplinary matters.

However, as it happens in many instances, there was no further probe by the Education ministry on the status of student discipline in schools - a typical Malaysian attitude of 'we'll cross the bridge when we come to it' - and the issue died down.

Late entry

Today, the floodgates have been violently crashed opened and 'crossing the bridge' now requires some serious and matured thinking. Government agencies have to shirk their piece-meal approach in dealing with problems and get down to some serious work.

When the issue concerned rape, there was much talk about profiling the rapist to get to the root of the problem and about getting sex education implemented in schools. Just how much has been done? The silence is deafening to us.

While rape is no less serious an issue, again, no thanks to the government's lack of foresight, the issue has been carelessly placed on the back burner. In the case of juvenile crime, the worry is that the same lackaidaisical attitude will be adopted or as the Malay proverb goes ' seperti melepaskan batuk di tangga .'

Just what will it take for those in power (courtesy of the naive rakyat) to come to their senses and realise that they really have to get down to work and not merely pay lip-service to the media and to the people?

The police, while trying to show concern about juvenile crime, somehow made an entry into the scene a bit too late. The Inspector-General of Police Mohd Bakri Omar was quoted in the newspapers on April 1 as saying that despite awareness campaigns and lectures in schools, crime involving those between the ages of seven and 18 rose by 22.7 percent last year compared with year 2002.

In 2003, there were 3, 627 cases or an average of 10 cases a day while in 2002, there were 2,955 cases or an average of eight cases a day. Mohd Bakri further said that the number of youths and students arrested also rose, with 5, 326 youths arrested last year compared with 4, 200 in 2002.

In conclusion, the IGP's modus operandi to handle the problem came to this - setting up crime prevention branches in all police districts throughout the country to tackle juvenile crime.

Failed effort

The question that begs an answer is this - why must the IGP only disclose the statistics of juvenile crime at this juncture, when a life has been lost? Was there pressure of any kind for the police to exhibit its worry over the Mohd Farid Ibrahim incident or was it a show of concern that was extended by the Barisan Nasional via the law keepers?

In any case, such a delayed tactic by the police is not going to improve matters. Also, it seems that the IGP either is very busy maintaining peace in the country to flip through the newspapers or he has very little to say about what is written in the newspapers.

I say this because Mohd Bakri missed a point that was recently raised in a Sunday newspaper by Malaysian Crime Prevention Foundation vice-president Lee Lam Thye that the crime prevention clubs set up in schools are a flop. The clubs, the brainchild of the foundation, were set up to give students some awareness on the do's and don't's of crime prevention.

Sadly, that effort failed to convince students, parents and teachers on the importance of learning about crime prevention. Now, instead of finding scapegoats of making someone a sacrificial lamb for government inefficiency, we, the people, hope that some semblance of maturity and understanding of the issue at hand is shown when it comes to dealing with matters of life and death in this country.

For the Education minister, he must turun padang from time to time to check if all is well. Merely getting his ministry staff to monitor calls made to a hotline is not going to solve the pressing problem.

Money politics

And for heavens sake, the officials should stop using the lack of money as an excuse to 'justify' the disciplinary problem, as what was done by Negri Sembilan State Islamic Religious Affairs Department education head, Abu Hassan Ahmad in Mohd Farid Ibrahim's case.

Abu Hassan went on record to say that "lack of funding may be a reason why they were disciplinary problems in the school. Because programmes to motivate and discipline students could not be carried out, teachers may have been oblivious to the problems of some students."

Abu Hassan's disclaimer sounds pathetic. Was the religious school running as a charitable body? Could it not even get sponsors to help organise motivational talks? Granted the abused 'Malaysia Boleh' concept is all about lavishness, but really, was Abu Hassan's department looking for RM1 million to carry out motivational talks?

Money politics apparently is creeping into the education system too, if Abu Hassan's statement is read between the lines. Is that how we can best tackle the problem of juvenile crime involving students and youths - by corrupting the education system with money politics?

JJ RAY started her career with a mainstream publication. A non-conformist, she soon saw the barriers that went up whenever, through her writing, she tried to make the world a home for one and all.