The Gangsters of Malaysia

Malaysian's mass media likes to associate crime with foreign immigrants. Just take a look at TV3 for instance, raid by police will always shows police capturing illegal foreignors. Eventhough they have the tendency to do violence, studies have shown that the foreign immigrants only contributes to 2% of the total index crime in Malaysia. What they should focus more is the increasing level of gangsterism in Malaysia. Below is a graph I found on the statistics of registered gang members in Malaysia in 2004. Made me think, how did they register? with whom? ministry of gangsterism? :)

Source: The Rise of Crime in Malaysia, ACP Amar Singh Sidhu, 2004

I have been educated in a Malaysian public school, and I have to admit, gangsterism is a norm. Fightings outside or inside the school is like a normal occurence. Just you are walking by to buy that delicious cendol (and play some tikam) outside the school gate, suddenly bangg.. a student get walloped by a helmet by another student. Schools of course under reported this as to keep the squeeky clean image of the school. When fights happen, teachers will usually turn away and act as nothing is happening. When fight happens, students will gather around to see it like a wrestling match in television. Honestly, it's exciting to see a hooligan bashing up another student mercilessly without any apparent reason, unless it is you who is being beaten up. Chinese, Indians and Malays each form its own gang. Never I have seen a multiracial gang. From my personal observation, the Indian and Malay gang usually fight bcoz of a girl. Wahh..so romantic la these fella. The Chinese gang is much more organised and is usually linked with triads outside the school.

Ok, on a serious note, what cause students to get involved in a gang? Disfunctional family? poor family? Single parent family? On a book entitled Freakonomics, Stephen Levitt has a theory on this. He says that whether a child is going bad or not is not correlated with good or bad parenting. It's largely due to who are your child's friends. You can give the best parenting possible, but if he get mixed with a bad crowd, he would likely fall into the dark side. Man.. Just look at Star Wars, Anakin become Darth Vedder bcoz of bad peer pressure by the Sith Lord. Haha.. Even the wise Yoda could not save him. Freaky isnt' it?