A little bit about Vandalism

Vandalism at school

Vandalism involves destroying other peoples property, like benches, garbage bins, lanterns, plants, bicycles, windows etcetera. It also involves graffiti on walls, windows and benches, which is hard to remove and costs a lot of money. Graffiti and destruction of other peoples property both cost piles of money and is against the law. When you are caught red-handed on the committing of vandalism by the police they will most certainly arrest you, and you either have to pay a fine or get a task sentence. You don’t have to expect that you can elude your sentence when you are arrested for vandalism, because you have destroyed things which don’t belong to you, and you will have to pay for it.


In the King County's Big Finn Hill Park a restroom has been smashed to pieces by vandals. The vandals were probably drunk and just started smashing they toilets apart, or they tried to be cool in front of their friends and have a bit of fun destroying stuff.


This toilet has been sprayed over with graffiti. Though the toilets haven’t been destroyed, graffiti is also vandalism. Opinions about graffiti are divided. The younger generations often like the texts and drawings that are sprayed everywhere on the walls, doors and floors. They love the designs, colours ( colours which you won’t find in any ordinary toilet at school ) and it’s simply ‘cool ’. The older generations on the other hand don’t like it all. They think it’s destroying, clogging and littering school property.

Police and Bad Friends...

Stop! You’ve comitted the crime! What crime? Vandalism… What do police do against vandals?

If police arrest you, you’ll be punished. In the Netherlands you’ll be punished by Bureau Halt, a special organisation that’s responsible for crime like vandalism, use firework while it’s forbidden to do that and more things like these.
The vandals had to do a so called ‘taakstraf’. They had to clean walls, stations, public places, the sidewalk, a big square etc. They’ll do this for a few months, weeks or days. But they’ll ask questions too. Questions like ‘why did you do this?’, ‘how are you going to make your parents trusting you and believe the others thing you have done?’ and ‘how do you think about you’ve done?’
But… after this months, weeks or days the most vandals fall in recurrence. Some vandals will not, but a majority of them will fall in recurrence. Do we had to find another way of punishing them? What can police do against them, if the so called ‘taakstraf’ doesn’t meant anything in some of the Dutch city’s.

In the Netherlands, people destroying things for 250 million euros. Bureau Halt want to make students at secondary schools consciously. They show pictures of vandalised places. Of course they show pictures of firework and things like that, but that’s not about the topic we’re talking about. The students realise that students who committed crime like this, don’t have real manners.
Why are some students becoming vandals? That’s a question that’s questioned many times. There are a few reasons. Some people were bullied in the past en are looking for something they can do to let their feelings out of themselves. But the most attentive reason is ‘bad friends’. Some friends, who’re already vandals, can affect their friends who don’t vandalise. If this non-vandal friend isn’t unsure about himself or herself, it’s very easy to affect him or her. They don’t tell their parents what they are up to, because they think it’s a bit embarrassing, but that isn’t at all. You should say ‘no’ to bad friends who are affecting you.
It’s necessary to tell you’re parents you are a vandal. If you don’t really want to vandalise, they can help you. Of course, you’re parents always want to know what you’re up to, even if you really like to vandalise. It will be no surprise for them, that you’ll be at the police station in a few months…

The police will talk with you about what you’ve done. As I told earlier, you will risk a ‘taakstraf’ for a few months, weeks, days and if you have luck: a few hours. At least, I want to show you a few experiences from people who committed crime like vandalism and were punished by bureau halt…

- To be continued -

How can we reduce vandalism on schools?

Of course you can try to catch all the vandalisms, but every new kid on the planet can mean a new vandal on the planet. In this way you’ll keep chasing for more vandals. It’s way easier when you’ll reduce vandalisms for as much as possible before they actually will be created. The only way to really reduce it, is by reducing the tendency for committing such thing. The only way to do this is by making sure he or she has no reasons to do it. The reasons for the vandal are mentioned below:

- vandalism by emotional reasons (the vandal is committing the crime because he’s angry, stressed out or extremely depressed and he vents it into something)

- vandalism by damage (the vandal sees something which is already damaged and gets the tend to damage it more)

- vandalism by boredom (the vandal has nothing else to do and the rest follows)

- vandalism in a group (the vandal is forced to commit the vandalism in order to stay in the group he’s member of and that’s how it begins)

Now that we know the reasons, I’ll try to give some examples in how to reduce this crime.

- to reduce the emotional reasons, you can take the vandal to a psychiatrist. He or she will ask the vandal some questions and, eventually, come with an answer to help him or her.

- Reducing the vandalism by damage is actually quite easy to do, but it’s really expensive. Repairing the damage before the vandal can worsen it is the best way to get the job done.

- Vandalism by boredom is not so hard either, because there’s always something to do except this. As long as you WANT to do something.

- Vandalism in a group is a little harder to do, but if you REALLY want to reduce it, you just need to quit the membership in this group and you don’t need to do anything.

As a school you can give a lesson to inform the students in how expensive the damage could be what the punishments are when you are caught red handed. The teachers themselves can give them the lesson, but they’ll listen more when a police officer will come in front of the class.

A story of Vandalism

Erik was bullied almost his whole life. It began when he was 4 and it wasn’t over yet. To pay the bullies, who are bullying him, back he began to destroy their bikes. It felt good and he did it more and more. After a while he got into a group of other vandals, that destroyed windows and then go trough the window and chill in the building. He was in that group for 2 years. At the end of the second year Erik was caught with his whole group when they broke a window of his own school and got trough the window and broke in to the school canteen. When he got at the police office they putted him into a room without windows. After a while a men came in and asked if he wanted something. Erik was to frightened to say something. A bit later an other man came in and asked him why he had begun. Erik said that he only wanted to pay the bullies of his school back. After the interrogation Erik heard his punishment. He must do 48 hours of community work and pay back the broken things. That’s wat happens when you have your angry suppressed.

The (figurative) bond between vandalism and school

You can find traces of vandalism everywhere. Even at your own school. You can find some gum under your seat, some drawings at the desk you’re working, graffiti on the walls and windows and many more. Vandalism is a huge problem which is very expensive to solve. To just remove the ink of the graffiti on the walls for example, you need some expensive chemical stuff, which is also damaging the environment. The desks which are damaged are also not so cheap to repair. Sometimes you even need to buy another one, which means more and more money. The four most common reasons are:
- vandalism by damage (something is already damaged and you’ll start thinking to damage it more, because it doesn’t make much sense at all)
- vandalism by depression (you’re depressed or just mad at someone or something and you start damaging the nearest object by this reason)
- vandalism by being bored (this sounds pretty obvious: you’re bored and you have nothing else to do)
- vandalism in a group (You’re part of a group, but after a while the members will start thinking about throwing you out of the group unless you’ll damage something)

the last reason is unfortunately the most common. When you’re in a group, the group will actually do more damage automatically than when you’re alone.

The police fortunately will concentrate more at vandalism to reduce it. In this way they can bust more and more vandals while doing their thing. Sometimes the person will get away with it, but mostly they need to clean the paint with their bare hands and some paper. Like you see in this picture it’s hard work.

Vandalism and what to do?

What can you do against vandalism? That’s a big question that goes around on big schools. There is much vandalism on schools or around them. There are big issues and smaller ones. Some of the small are destroying stuff of your friends and students. Bigger ones, are people who throw stones trough windows and go into the school and make all the things dirty and things like that. The small things aren’t big enough for police but the big ones are police cases.

A few things you can do against vandalism is installing some movement sensors, which can detect movements at windows and doors so when some vandals are destroying windows and come in the school you hear an alarm and the police is warned because they have a special detector that can see when the alarm is going of somewhere and then they can arrest the vandals and your problem is solved. Also you can place a normal alarm system that doesn’t cost as much as the movement sensors but less effective.




What for suggestions do you have for protection against Vandals?

Hello

Hello, we are a group of 4 students of the Comenius College, located in Capelle aan de IJssel in the Netherlands. This website is an assignment from school, and we need to discuss a topic about what school can do against youth who are hanging around shop area's and school. Let's introduce ourselfs first.

We:

- Richard, 15 years old, lives in Capelle a/d IJssel, a city in the near of Rotterdam. My hobby's are drawing, computering, writing and reading.I also like to visit theatres and cinema's. Especially musicals, I have already visited the musicals 'Jesus Christ Superstar' and 'The Wiz'.
The subjects I like are drawing, French, people and society (combination of geographic and history) and philosophy. In the future I would like to study psychology, journalistic or a study for teachers.

- Edgar, 15 years old, lives in Rotterdam, close to Capelle a/d IJssel. My hobby's are computering, painting miniature models, and drawing. I like to go to the cinema and watch movies and tv-series, especially science fiction, comedy and fantasy ( starwars, stargate, lordoftherings ). My favorite subjects on school are Latin, Greek and drawing.

- Bart, 15 year’s old, lives in Rotterdam. My hobby’s are: watching TV, playing computer games like battle for middle earth 2 and call of duty, painting miniatures and more. I also like to go to the cinema to watch movies, especially: fantasy, science-fiction, comedy and historical movies. My favourite school subjects are: mythology, geography, physics

- Yoeri, 14 years old an I am also from the Comenius college in Capelle aan den IJssel. I don’t live there. I live in Nieuwerkerk aan den IJssel I like playing computer games and playing on my play station 2. I like to read also and I really like comics. I play basketball and the music I like is Hardcore. I like the
Stargate series. I also like series like South park and the Simpson’s. My favourite films are Troy, all the starwars movies, Pirates of the Caribbean etc. I like the subjects History, Geography and Physical Education. i want to be a History teacher after i studied History on the university of Leiden.

- Mark, 15 years old and I’m born on the 29th of December. I come from Holland (from a village near Rotterdam to be more accurate) and I’m also a student of the Comenius College. My hobbies are playing on the computer (mostly games which allows you to play on the internet with players all over the world) and I play on the guitar once in a while. I also listen to music sometimes, but it is not very common for me and you probably won’t know the groups, because they are pretty old and not very popular right now. I also like watching movies a lot. My favourite genres are actions, but I also like comedy’s (especially parodies like “wrongfully accused” and “Top Secret!”). The movies I liked allot, are movies like “True Lies”, “Red Heat” and “Rambo: First Blood”.