Coping with the Rising Tide of Vandalism
AT A Philadelphia school youngsters smashed 170 windows, cut telephone lines and spattered paint over classrooms. The damage cost $10,000 to repair and forced the school to close for a day.
Students at a St. Louis elementary school went on a rampage, throwing more than a hundred desks through windows and pushing a piano down a flight of stairs.
In Toronto, Canada, a police officer said regarding the frenzied destruction upon a school there: “It was like the set of a bombed-out building, straight out of a war movie.”
It would be bad enough if these were rare incidents. But they are not. According to a special report developed by the staff of Education U.S.A., school vandalism has gained “the magnitude of a national dilemma.”
Not Just Schools
Vandals also deface and destroy businesses, homes, libraries, museums, churches, banks, parks, playgrounds, cemeteries, public telephones, cars, buses, subways, trains—practically every kind of private and public property.
Much of the destruction is done by roaming bands of youths. The San Francisco Examiner calls them “mousepacks.” They bash in windows, snap antennas off parked cars, ransack playgrounds, start fires, spray paint and create havoc in about every way imaginable.
“We are under constant attack,” said a representative of the Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company. “It doesn’t make any difference whether the kids are seven or 17—they urinate in the stations, decorate them with swastikas and four-letter words, tamper with the signals and break the glass. When we installed shatter-proof mercury vapor lights on high poles, they shot them out.”
In New York city practically all the 7,000 subway cars have paint or graffiti smeared on them, and many windows are broken. Acts of vandalism resulted in more than 560 injuries on the city’s subways and buses in a recent year, mostly from broken glass. Objects thrown at or dropped on automobiles kill about a hundred persons annually in the United States.
But youths are not the only vandals. In 1971 the new John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was opened to the public. In three months souvenir-hunting vandals had taken virtually everything “reachable and detachable,” Senator Charles Percy lamented. Carpets had been cut up, chandeliers ruined, paintings and potted plants removed, restroom faucets pried off, and so forth. Beautiful national parks, too, are vandalized by young and old alike.
A Staggering Cost
The total bill for vandalism is gigantic. In one year alone 243,652 windows were broken in New York City schools! National losses to U.S. schools are estimated to be $200 million annually owing to window breakage, theft and arson. But other authorities say that this is a “grossly understated” figure, since there are other losses.
For example, in 1969 the loss from vandalism in New York City schools was reported to be $2,266,025. But Hugh McLaren, Jr., executive director of New York City’s Office of School buildings, noted that this did not include the expense of repairing defaced walls and desks, broken furniture and fixtures. He said that, if such expenses were included, “the total would be three times the amount quoted in the report.”
But there is another major expense: Maintaining a school security force. In 1971 New York City schools more than doubled the size of their security force at an expense of $1 million. Los Angeles schools, too, spend over $1 million a year for security agents. In New York schools police officers sometimes register as students and attend classes.
Whatever is the cost of school vandalism—some say it is “close to half a billion dollars annually”—the bill cannot be calculated simply in dollars and cents. The fear and tension created by the destruction, or threat of destruction, interferes with education and can even contribute to illnesses. All this cost to schools is only part of the total bill of vandalism.
Repair of vandalized cars, private homes, businesses, churches and other establishments also runs into the many millions of dollars. Removal of graffiti alone is a major expense. The cost just to the New York subway system is about half a million dollars a year. Philadelphia estimates that it spends $4 million annually to cope with the problem. The Christian Century observed editorially: “The removal of graffiti and slogans from walls and rocks is now a futile billion-dollar-a-year enterprise in America alone.”
Why does this tide of vandalism seem to be rising each year?
What Is Behind It?
Many explanations have been given. “All crime is up, everywhere, and this is just a part of it,” said a Chicago transit authority official.
“Vandalism and Violence,” a special report developed by the staff of Education U.S.A., points to improper instruction and adult behavior as contributing factors: “The Boston Tea Party is often held up to students as a ‘patriotic act,’ a sort of punishment for the British in retaliation for an onerous tea tax. Yet what happened was pure vandalism perpetrated by grown men.”
When taken together, the various reasons given seem to indicate that vandalism is often a protest. Stanford University Professor Philip G. Zimbardo explains: “Vandalism is rebellion with a cause.” The cause, he says, is “social indifference, apathy, the loss of community, neighborhood and family values.”
It is true that practically everywhere young ones see loss of values—lying, cheating and hypocrisy are rampant, even among world leaders. This breeds hostility in youngsters against ‘the establishment,’ and vandalism is one way they vent their feelings.
Also, parents contribute to vandalism. Judge John Forte of Concord, Massachusetts, indicates how: “You look at kids sitting by their parents, awaiting trial in our new courtroom. They’re whittling their initials on the benches while their parents look on, unconcerned. The unhappy kids have parents who care too little to notice what they’re doing, much less instruct them.”
Indifferent, uncaring parents are perhaps the main cause of vandalism. And this abdication of responsibility by parents is noted in practically every community. As a result, rich, poor, middle class, and both black and white youngsters are all deeply involved in vandalism. A study of more than 3,100 teen-agers from “every major segment of the Illinois adolescent population” revealed that nearly one in every three had engaged in property destruction!
How can this rising tide of vandalism be stemmed?
What Is Needed?
Many efforts are being made to reverse the tide. Difficult-to-break plastic is replacing glass in school windows. Hard-finish epoxy-resin paints are being used on interior walls that resist markings with felt-tip pens, lipstick and crayons. New schools are being built like fortresses, with few, if any, exterior windows. Alarms, fences, night lighting, guard dogs—all these measures and more have been employed. Yet vandalism increases.
This does not mean the situation is hopeless. There is a solution. An editorial pointed to it when it said: “The real answer is to modify the conduct of our young.” But how?
One approach has been by legislation. Thirty-eight states have passed laws that now make parents responsible for the vandalous acts of their youngsters. Making parents pay for the damage their children cause has helped, but has by no means solved the problem. More is required.
A juvenile officer with good insight indicated this, saying: “The payment of money won’t do away with vandalism—it just papers over this sickness with dollar bills. When parents devote sufficient time and attention to their kids because they want to—not because they are afraid of future bills or fines—the problem of vandalism will begin to recede.”
Actually children require more than simply the time and attention of their parents. They need parents to instruct them on why obedience to law and respect for others’ property is right. But who is to say what is right? It is not simply some humans. It is our Creator, Almighty God, and he tells us what is right in his Word, the Bible.
Parents who rear their children with love and respect for their Creator and his righteous requirements find that among their offspring the rising tide of vandalism can effectively be stemmed.