Reducing Crime Through Gameplay

Via Kotaku, a piece on Spong that sees games being put to good use in a social context. Edinburgh, Scotland police officers are using weekly PlayStation 2 tournaments with troubled youths as a way to bridge the gap between law enforcement and folks that (under less auspicious circumstances) they might have confrontations with. From the article: "The tournaments so far have been between members of the local Police Youth Action Team and a group of around 30 youths who are known regular offenders. Since the initiative started it seems to have had the effect of cutting crime in the locality quite dramatically. Officers dealt with 92 complaints in the month before the competition but only 53 while it was running. Ninety-three calls were received during the same period last year."

Comments

Re:Won't somebody think of the good kids?

[Ibix]

It might just be nice, for a change, to organize something fun like this for the youth who actually haven't done anything criminal in their previous years; reward the good guys for a change.

The point here is not to reward bad behaviour, but to encourage the interaction of the kids with the cops. It's harder for the kids to see the cops as faceless oppressors when they've met them as people.

This is standard "wooly liberal" thinking. Engage with people, don't beat them over the head[1]. I'm always glad to see people practicing it: being a "wooly liberal" myself, I think it's a great strategy. I hope they're keeping careful track of it's results, because I'd like hard evidence to test the theory.

I

[1] Except when you're out of rail-gun ammo, of course... ;)