Nobody Is Responsible For Youth Violence and Crime Vancouver, BC Canada - As we look for the root causes of violence in our children and youth, we need not look further than into the closest mirror. If you are a parent reading this, it must be hard to read the text with your head buried so deep in the sand or somewhere else. If you are a child or youth reading this, thank you for taking the time out of your important daily schedule taking the risk that the world may stop revolving around you. If you are a teacher, thanks for realizing that kids should not bully other kids but don’t worry the union will back you in your quest to bully the kids into submission. Everyone knows that a teacher should never give a child the respect they deserve; after all they are just kids. If you are a cop reading this, just continue to blame the courts because we all know that the kids do not act out and react to you being completely oblivious to their rights. Court workers and judges, you are well insulated from these random acts of violence and criminal activity when you leave the courthouse for your own planet each day. Thank you to the TV networks, Movie Industry and video game companies for reminding us that kids and teens are not at all impacted by what they see in the world as long as we call it “entertainment”. Please do not worry though, I will not tell the corporations who are spending billions of dollars in advertising revenues focused on youth markets under the impression that it actually influences buying habits and purchasing decisions. Hey doctors, good work. I agree that it is much easier to medicate the kids and keep your friends in the pharmaceutical industries happy. Hey if they are not happy, how can you expect them to foot the bill for next years big golf retreat? It sure is easier to work your way through to the 19th hole than to work your way through the contributing factors of a child or youths problems. Drug and alcohol addition services need not worry. You will have your jobs because we as a society are encouraging the addictive behaviors and patterns through video and internet gaming, text messaging etc. As long as we ignore the number one addiction of video games in our society, you will have work for many years to come. Hey video game addiction therapy… Not everyone is doing this yet. That means you could charge twice as much as the already over priced therapists dealing with the old school addictions of drugs and alcohol. Is there any one else I have forgotten? Not to worry, we can link you to this problem as a general member of society. Let’s ALL start taking responsibility for our contributing part in the issues facing our communities. Regardless of it being crime, economic crisis, homelessness, poverty and other problems. If we do not teach children accountability, we are only assured that things will get worse before they get better. We need to stop coddling the children and youth to an excess. A three year old child will not place their hand in a camp fire as they know that it will burn and they will hurt. They will put their hands, feet and heads into the proverbial fire of the justice system as they know if the flames get to high, someone will be there to put them out. If we teach them accountability on minor offenses they will be less inclined to move on to more involved or violent criminal activity. If we spend one tenth of the money on prevention and education as we do on incarceration, we would have a reduced number of children and youth, and eventually adults going through the revolving doors of the justice system. Let’s instead keep denying that each and every person holds some responsibility in the problems we face by failing to demand changes and working harder to find real solutions. I mean it is easy to launch missiles into a country and invade them because they killed so many on 9-11. Even though more kids each year are killed by guns than the total number of people which were killed on 9-11. Hey don’t you dare go after the legal gun owners because they failed to take the proper steps in securing their weapons so they do not get into the hands of children, teens and criminals. Guns do not kill people, idiots who fail to secure them do. END Youth Violence teaches youth violence strategies to teachers, children, youth, parents, police, social workers and other around the world. It is still amazing how many people will take the time to learn about how a new video game works or are anal enough to read the owners manual of their new care from cover to cover and yet they have not got a clue of the warning signs and indicators of a child or youth at risk of being victimized or being an aggressor. This has not changed very much since the Columbine incident and others around the world. When I was asked to review the Columbine investigation documents on the handling of the tragedy, I was able to find over a dozen very simple to spot warning signs which should have and could have prevented the death of even one student. As we continue to make the same mistakes and follow them by the same lack of effective solutions, we will see the continued growth of violence in our communities. As the severity of violence increases, we will see the numbers of reported incidents actually decline in the stats and reports. Unfortunately, this is not because the numbers of incidents are actually decreasing but instead because our lack of ability to protect the victims and stop the violence, less and less children and youth are coming forward to report violent crimes. I am currently dealing with yet another case in Alberta, Canada where the teacher is the bully, mentally abuses students causing serious emotional damage. The punishment for the student and his mother challenging the teachers’ actions is that the student is being forced into a “Boot Camp” run by the very same teacher. When did our school system decide it was ok to sentence children and youth to boot camps when even the courts have stopped doing this? So if your child or youth comes to you and discloses a problem with another student or even a teacher or school employee, take it seriously and stand by them. For more on youth violence prevention and intervention go to www.youthandviolence.com or email help@youthandviolence.com. Contributed By: James Miller, founder of END Youth Violence, International Youth Crime and Violence Prevention Educator & Author. The above may be reproduced in whole or in part provided credit is given to www.youthandviolence.com.