This is a serious question that I'm having difficulty with.
It seems like lately there's a lot of teens having a grand ole time just breaking things, stealing kias, etc. Generally causing monetary distress to the communities they live in without actually stealing anything of value or use.
Like its not crimes of desperation, they're not selling anything they steal, just having a good time breaking car windows and doing general mischief.
I know news media will amplify these for copaganda purposes. Hogs will go wild shouting for public executions of these teens, etc.
But like, what causes this and what can be done to help communities not have dangerously bored teens just absolutely fucking up people's month or year by destroying their budget car they need to get to work, breaking windows which is expensive to fix, and just happens again, and generally just being dicks breaking things.
Not all the victims of crime are annoying SF tech bloggers which are easy to write off and laugh at.
if my simple mind has been completely taken advantage of, please let me know. I just don't get the young chaos agents. I can defend people stealing from walgreens but I just don't get breaking your neighbors shit.
EDIT: Since the real likely answer is sad and doomery, I want to invite folks to offer ideas of what could be done to strengthen these communities and give these kids an outlet.
Do you have statistically meaningful data to show that there has been an upswing? I don't blame you for expressing concern, but to engage in dialogue without data is to sell short everyone involved. cheers!
Hey, i typed this while I started looking up stats. I know, not a great start.
I asked this because I have a friend in Rochester, NY who is at the very least left of the dem party and talks about material conditions, telling me about how one street had all the car windows broken twice in three weeks. Also I've been following the technical "how" of the kia boyz stuff.
It's a pain to find specific stats, I've been able to find a 2018 stat of ~248/100k[1], then as of june 1st 2023, 2200 cars have been stolen in rochester ytd[2], which with a population of about ~200k, puts that as 4x increase from 5 years ago, and only halfway through the year.
So it appears to be a drastic increase, many of them are the hyundais and kias, which are typically just taken for a joy ride and trashed. But I don't have the stats to determine how many of them are either of those brands.
Anyway, the second link obviously shows intent to be like "look at these evil TEENAGERS" using the kia as a specific example from the pig conference.
1 2
I know Kias are a popular target because somebody on Tiktok got viral showing how to very easily steal a bunch of a popular Kia models and then a trend of stealing Kias started
Yeah the Kias had no interlock system so they're basically as easy to steal as a convertible from the 60s.
That sounds like really targeted behavior, in one neighborhood. It doesn't sound (to me anyways) like a trend or statistically meaningful. Sounds to me like you have a small clique of perhaps teens (don't know for sure until arrests are made) going around being buttholes.
Yeah, I'm thinking of the scene in the 1970s documentary Dazed and Confused when they went around smashing mailboxes and throwing a bowling ball at stuff.
It's cheap, fun, rebellious, and you can usually get away with it. Hard to imagine ever completely getting rid of it.
It's called hooliganism.
It's always been a problem but now you can film yourself doing it and raise your status. Those likes and retweets are very rewarding, particularly for boys and young men who see no rewards in life.