What do you think is the room for improvement in the HKSAR Government's efforts to popularize the law among young people in the future?
Member of the Legislative Assembly of Macao, Lam Lun Wai: In view of the weak legal knowledge and awareness of young people, the relevant functional departments of the government need to strengthen the legal popularization and education of young people, further strengthen the legal education of young people, and increase their legal knowledge and awareness of law-abiding, so as to improve the effectiveness. At the same time, through the cooperation of the government, schools and families, we will guide young people to make friends positively, so that they can establish a good concept of making friends and give full play to the influence of their peers.
On the basis of the government's online media short films, online legal knowledge games, "new places for legal popularization", youth legal promotion month and other activities, further use social media, short videos and other platforms popular with young people to carry out legal popularization publicity, increase their participation and interest, strengthen legal popularization publicity, and strengthen their legal knowledge. However, the content of law popularization needs to be closer to the actual life of young people, and pay attention to their hot issues, such as cyber security and consumer rights protection. At the same time, it is necessary to strengthen the systematization and continuity of the work of popularizing legal knowledge to ensure the long-term and effectiveness of the work.
President of the Youth Association of the Macao Women's Federation, Lui Sai Ying: The Macao SAR Government has always attached great importance to the popularization of the law among young people in Macao, actively carried out various crime prevention publicity and education work, and maintained close contact with local education circles and youth associations. Since the establishment of the HKSAR, the "Concerned Juvenile Unit" has been set up to focus on youth crime prevention. In 2008, the "School Safety Network Scheme" was established to jointly carry out the education of young people on crime prevention and law-abiding through tripartite cooperation among families, schools and the police. In 2013 and 2018, the "Fight Crime Junior Pioneer Seed Programme" and the "Community Safety Youth Leader Programme" were launched to organise community activities to enhance participants' law-abiding and crime prevention awareness, nurture them to become youth role models and bring positive influence to their peers.
It is worth noting that the juvenile delinquency data in the report shows that four out of ten of the respondents did not know that they were required to bear the legal consequences before committing the crime, reflecting their general lack of awareness of the seriousness of criminal offences. The report also pointed out that the main channels for them to acquire legal knowledge were schools and parents, accounting for 6 out of 10, reflecting that parents and teachers play a very important role in cultivating young people's awareness of law-abiding.
The General Association of the Women's Federation of Macau has been committed to the development of family education, including through positive parenting, sex education, legal popularization and other diversified means, to promote residents to establish a happier family relationship and enhance communication between parents and children; At the same time, through the organization of juvenile volunteer groups, women's legal popularization volunteer groups and other organizations, to enhance the awareness of young people to abide by the law, and to disseminate crime prevention information to the community.
Therefore, in order to better promote the popularization of law among young people, it is necessary to start from the source, and it is recommended to strengthen the allocation of resources for popular legal education, promote the inclusion of schools in their school-based curriculum, and formulate clear teaching objectives, content and evaluation criteria for this purpose, and invite parents to participate in the implementation and evaluation of the effectiveness. At the same time, in response to the latest developments in the social situation, teachers are provided with the latest training courses on the prevention of juvenile delinquency, which can also be used as professional development training hours for teachers, so that teachers can better impart legal knowledge and law-abiding awareness to students; In terms of the future development direction of family education policy, it is recommended to provide parents with teaching resources for adolescent legal education, so as to improve the overall level of family popularization. In terms of mechanism, it is recommended that young students be included in the relevant home-school police liaison mechanism, so as to encourage them to take the initiative to disseminate law-abiding and crime prevention information to their peers.
Fu Chengzhe, Deputy Director of the Research Center for Cross-Domain Governance and Public Policy in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, South China Normal University: The Macao SAR Government has made a lot of efforts to popularize the law among young people, for example, in order to cooperate with the implementation of the Macao Youth Policy (2021-2030) of the Macao SAR Government, and continue to strengthen the work of popularizing the law among young people, the Legal Affairs Bureau, the Education and Youth Development Bureau, the Municipal Affairs Bureau, the Economic and Technological Development Bureau, the Labour Affairs Bureau, the Police Headquarters, the Public Security Police Force, the Judicial Police, the Cultural Affairs Bureau, the Health Bureau, A total of 12 departments, including the Social Welfare Bureau and the Environmental Protection Bureau, jointly organised the 2023 "New Teen Places for Legal Popularization" Youth Legal Promotion Month from September to November this year, co-organising more than 20 activities through a dual-track online and offline approach.
The vivid cases can make minors feel awe of the majesty of the law. It is recommended to hold special lectures, select legal knowledge closely related to the vital interests of school students, such as the prevention of campus sexual assault, campus bullying, telecommunication fraud, drugs, etc., into the lecture content, and use real cases and classic legal stories to tell in an easy-to-understand way why teenagers should learn legal knowledge, the reasons for juvenile delinquency, and how to strengthen their awareness of self-prevention, stay away from illegal crimes, and further enhance students' awareness of self-protection. Cultivating and deepening young people's law-abiding awareness is a long-term process that requires gradual and long-term strategies.
Chan Wai Leung, Chairman of the Macao Neighborhood Youth Association: According to the "Survey Report on the Characteristics of Delinquent Youth (2023)" of the Social Welfare Bureau of the Macao SAR Government, we know that about half of the teenagers know that their actions will have legal consequences, but at the same time, about 40% of the teenagers do not know. Therefore, in the face of young people, it is necessary to go deeper and more comprehensively into schools and communities, so that young people can have a greater sense of abiding by the law.
What's more noteworthy is why some of the teenagers mentioned above know they are breaking the law, but why do they still do it? There may be other factors that attract you to do it, such as money; or failure to recognize the seriousness of the consequences of violating the law. As a social worker, I believe that it is not enough to strengthen the popularization of the law, we need to pay attention to the cultivation of empathy among young people, so that they can understand whether their behavior hurts others, and at the same time empathize with them, so that they can develop this kind of empathy, which is conducive to their law-abiding behavior. Therefore, it is recommended to develop young people's empathy on the basis of popularizing the law, which is an important part of helping to build their awareness of law-abiding.