Elections in some states in Germany - and, how else should it be, Roland Koch is at the front of populistic phrases.. as other German politicans do as well, the one or other way at least.
What's the exitment about?
In short: We had - once again - some 'teenies' with migration background who conducted brutal crime. Not to say that we do have the same type of crime also with 'teenies' with NO migration background every day as well.
I wonder why everybody is talking about deportation, Jail etc.. Why are only a few people talking about youth crime prevention? - Ok, they are talking but not walking their talk at all. I remember an article in the Berliner Tageszeitung about a police man who was brutally attacked by some teenagers a year or two ago. The very interesting thing these days was, the discussion was the same, politicans of all parties were blaming the others and of course demanding the one or other at this moment opportune thing.
What was the outcome?
As far as I am informed by some members in my living community working in the field of "Jugendfoerderung" (my bad english translation: youth encouragement) told me that by law 15% of the youth etat given in Germany should be used for youth encouragement. Since the above mentioned incident with the police man, only in Berlin, this went down to nearly 5% and this year, 2008, to below 1%...
Why's that?
I don't have the answer, but I think that prevention is not as easy measureable and supporting the gaining of a good image of politicans and others then waiting for the guaranteed and populistic event of conducted crimes. I know - even this here is quite populistic and I should do a better investigation before writing something like this in a public location - but I think as a discussion base, this is an interesting point to start from.
So the question is: Prevention or not?
I personally believe that prevention is the best method to go for - maybe we should provide politicans and other responsible people with a measurement method giving them the chance to gain image from such projects instead of provocating new events like the once currently in the discussion.
Disturbing...
... is to me that the press always reports bad things but does not support - nationwide, not locally - such projects by reporting about them on a long run and supporting them by this way and making them more interesting for the mass of the people in this country. This would be education we are lacking from and it would destroy the base for populists as well.
