Criminal Offenses Committed by Muslim Children at Henry Gurney Puncak Borneo School Kuching

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Abstract

Crimes committed by children in Sarawak are increasingly alarming and this not only involves petty crimes but also serious crimes such as drugs, theft, robbery and sexual crimes. According to the Royal Police Report (PDRM 2023) shows that in the last five years, there has been an increase of 15% in criminal cases involving perpetrators under the age of 18 in Sarawak. Therefore, this paper was conducted to explore criminal offenses among Muslim children at Henry Gurney Puncak Borneo School Kuching as well as to understand the factors that drive them to engage in criminal activities. By using qualitative methods through face-to-face interviews with three selected respondents and quantitative methods through the distribution of questionnaires to 56 child offenders as well as convenient and purposive sampling techniques. The writing is practical, theoretical and descriptive analysis, which is a statistical method used to explain, summarize and illustrate data in a form that is easier to understand. This author found that crime among children at Henry Gurney School Kuching involves several types of major offenses including drugs, theft, robbery, rape, sexual offenses and traffic offenses. Several factors influence their involvement in crime, including peer influence, lack of love and attention from family and social media influence. To address this problem, this writing suggests several prevention strategies that involve the roles of all parties. These include mandatory counselling sessions for parents, increasing parents' awareness of their role, providing religious education to children, paying attention to them and raising awareness about the dangers of crime. In addition, parents are reminded not to reduce their children to prevent them from falling into criminal activities. In conclusion, the findings of this paper are expected to be used as a reference by the authorities in their efforts to address criminal offenses involving children as perpetrators.