1. According to relevant information, there will be 106 juvenile delinquency cases in 2023, an increase of 41 cases and 46 cases respectively compared with 2022 and 2019, an increase of 63.1% and 76.7%. Do you have any comment on this? What do you think is the reason?
Member of the Legislative Council of Macau, Lam Lun Wei: I think there are the following reasons for the increase in juvenile delinquency: First of all, the factors of changes in the social environment. Secondly, the care and education of the family of origin is also an important reason.
President of the Youth Association of the Macao Women's Federation, Lui Cy Ying: After the epidemic, the income of many families has declined, and the financial support that parents can provide to their children may be reduced compared to the past, but young people are still not fully mature in terms of physical and mental development, and may not be able to fully understand the changes in the family economy. In addition, Macao is still dominated by dual-career families, and parents need to balance work and child discipline, which may lead to a situation of "burning candles at both ends". Under the influence of these factors, if there is a lack of proper guidance from schools and families, it may increase the risk of juvenile delinquency.
Fu Chengzhe, deputy director of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Cross-border Governance and Public Policy Research Center of South China Normal University: Among the 106 juvenile crime cases, there are about 42 ordinary injury cases, which are located in schools and public places.
Chan Wai Leung, Chairman of the Macao District Youth Association: In terms of numbers, the number of juvenile delinquencies has generally remained around 60 in the past few years, but in 2023, there will suddenly increase significantly, reaching 106 cases, which is indeed a phenomenon worthy of social attention. Why is this happening? Judging from the information on crimes, the crime of wounding accounts for a relatively large proportion; In addition, it is not difficult for us to find that these juvenile delinquents also happen to be a group of young people who have grown up in the epidemic.
2. According to the Survey Report on the Characteristics of Juvenile Delinquents (2023) issued by the Social Welfare Bureau of the Macao SAR Government, the age of offenders reported in 2023 was 14 years old, while the average age of offenders was 13.8 years old, while in 2020, the age of offenders was 13.9 years old. What do you think about this?
Hon Lam Lun Wai, Legislative Assembly of Macau: The government, schools and families need to work together to guide young people to make friends positively, establish a good concept of making friends, and exert a positive influence on their peers.
President of the Youth Association of the Women's Federation of Macau, Lui Cy Ying: A group survey has pointed out that the current Internet access rate of Macao residents has reached 93%, and the Internet access rate of children and teenagers aged 6 to 17 has reached 91%. Many parents are busy with their livelihoods or do not have enough time to communicate with their children face-to-face, and parent-child communication relies more on the Internet and communication tools, resulting in early intervention and correction of children's deviant behaviors.
Fu Chengzhe, deputy director of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Cross-regional Governance and Public Policy Research Center of South China Normal University: Regarding the trend of the younger age of crimes, I think it is necessary to do a good job in legal education as early as possible to prevent problems before they occur. Families have an important responsibility to educate.
Chan Wai Leung, Chairman of the Macao Neighborhood Youth Association: I think the trend of juvenile offenders being younger has something to do with the fact that information is becoming more and more developed in modern society and that young people are becoming more and more precocious.
3. What do you think is room for improvement in the HKSAR Government's efforts to popularize the law among young people in the future?
Lam Lun Wai, Member of the Legislative Council of Macau: 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 sense of friendship and give full play to the influence of their peers.
President of the Youth Association of the Women's Federation of Macau, Lui Lai Ying: 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 legal popularization 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 juvenile delinquency prevention, 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.
Fu Chengzhe, deputy director of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Cross-border Governance and Public Policy Research Center of South China Normal University: It is recommended to hold special lectures, select legal knowledge closely related to the vital interests of students, such as preventing campus sexual assault, campus bullying, telecommunications fraud, drugs, etc., into the lecture content, and use real cases and classic rule of law 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.
Chan Wai Leung, Chairman of the Macao Neighborhood Youth Association: 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.
4. How can we better enhance young people's awareness of law-abiding through the cooperation of the Government, schools and families?
Hon Lam Lun Wai, Legislative Council of Macau: The government plays a key role in enhancing young people's awareness of law-abiding, such as popularizing the law and understanding the law, and how to provide a safe and orderly environment for young people to grow up by formulating, optimising and enforcing relevant laws and regulations. In addition, in strengthening the crackdown on illegal acts, young people can also understand the serious consequences of illegal acts, and then consciously abide by the law.
President of the Youth Association of the Macao Women's Federation, Lui Wai Ying: Through the government's leadership, we will build a family education system suitable for the actual family situation in Macao, and establish a relevant evaluation system and personnel training mechanism, so as to promote the systematic and professional development of civic education, sexual knowledge, crime prevention, etc., and establish a communication and resource sharing platform of "home, government and school", so that parents and teachers can fully grasp the development of students; At the same time, it is also recommended that the Government should provide schools and parents with better family education resources.
Fu Chengzhe, deputy director of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Cross-Domain Governance and Public Policy Research Center of South China Normal University: In this model of government, schools and families working together, schools can be said to be in a key position, and schools need to publicize the government's laws and policies, so that they can penetrate into students' families. I think that this educational model of the "parent school" in the mainland is worthy of reference in Macao.
Chan Wai Leung, Chairman of the Macao District Youth Association: Families and schools should pay more attention to cultivating young people's empathy, and families and schools need to work together to strengthen young people's awareness of law-abiding.
5. Home-school cooperation is of great significance to the healthy growth of young people, what do you think are the concrete results of home-school cooperation in Macao? Do you have any suggestions for development?
Hon Lam Lun Wai, Legislative Council of Macao: From the current practice, home-school cooperation in Macao requires schools to actively feedback their children's performance in school to parents, and parents should also actively provide family education guidance. On the basis of the previous policy, the development of home-school co-operation should be further promoted through the following ways, so as to create better conditions for the all-round development of young people.
President of the Youth Association of the Women's Federation of Macau, Lui Wai Ying: In the long run, in order to promote the healthy development of home-school cooperation in Macao, it is necessary to create an effective system to fully balance and coordinate the workload of teachers, and to allocate teachers' teaching, administration and home-school work. In addition, it is also suggested that the Government allocate more resources to support schools to hire full-time staff who can promote home-school cooperation, so as to alleviate the work pressure of frontline teachers, so that teachers and schools can focus on students' textbook education and physical and mental development, so as to promote the institutionalization and professionalization of home-school cooperation in Macao.
Fu Chengzhe, Deputy Director of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Cross-regional Governance and Public Policy Research Center of South China Normal University: High-quality education requires the cooperation of both families and schools, and home-school cooperation helps to build a good growth environment for young people. I think there are some models of home-school co-operation in the mainland that Macao can refer to.
Chan Wai Leung, Chairman of the Macao District Youth Association: Considering that teachers themselves already have a certain burden on their teaching work, and that parents' associations need to coordinate regular home-school meetings, planning activities, administrative documents, etc., which have a certain negative impact on teachers, it is recommended that the government should strengthen support for schools to set up full-time staff to follow up the work of parents' associations, so that home-school cooperation can be carried out more professionally and smoothly, and at the same time promote enterprises to implement family-friendly policies, so that parents can participate in parent-teacher meetings and parenting education to a greater extent.
In this discussion, the guests put forward their own views and suggestions on the topics discussed, and the analysis was thorough and in place, including many incisive analysis and suggestions. Based on the opinions of all the guests, this journal believes that the increasing trend of juvenile delinquency is related to changes in the social environment, and juveniles are easily exposed to and affected by bad information, and the care and education of the original family is also an important reason.
It is worth pointing out that we need to pay attention to the cultivation of empathy among young people, so that they can understand whether their actions are hurting others, and at the same time empathize with others, so that they can develop this empathy, which is conducive to their law-abiding behavior. It is recommended that the HKSAR Government should strengthen the investment of legal education resources, promote the inclusion of schools in its school-based curriculum, and formulate clear teaching objectives, content and evaluation criteria for this purpose.
In the Internet era, the Government should actively promote the implementation of family-friendly policies in the community, so that dual-career parents can have more time to communicate with their children face-to-face in their spare time, establish a good and close parent-child relationship, and detect and correct their children's deviant behaviors at an early stage. At the same time, we should strengthen home-school cooperation to help young people establish correct values and codes of conduct. Young people are the future of Macao and the future of the motherland, and they need the care of the whole society to escort their healthy growth.