Karina Bocharova

Postgraduate student of Criminology and Penitentiary Law Department, Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University, Ukraine

VANDALISM AS A PROBLEM OF THE MODERM SOCIETY

Vandalism is a problem which is urgent in every society. It is one of the forms of the person’s destructive behavior that is expressed in deliberate breaking tangibles [5]. In spite of all economic problems and political turmoil, the most disgusting fact is that any attempts to make city beautiful and comfortable encounter meaningless and ineradicable ruining. According to Arnold P. Goldstein, vandalism is a willful act of destruction or deterioration of an alien property. Even purposefulness of the destructions creates difficulties while using this concept. Many kinds of damages to environment and equipments are caused not by a conscious desire to destroy, but by lack of care and neatness, contemplation of a personal convenience [2].

Due to objective (external) and subjective (psychological) features, related to violent assault, vandalism is absolutely an aggressive delinquency. The same source of aggression is a desire of destructions, negativism, mental disorders, etc. So the number of registered vandalism acts increased because of strengthening of aggression in all countries including Ukraine.

On the territory of the modern urban areas all over the world the most widespread form of vandalism manifestation which inflicts significant financial, social and psychological damages and deforms architectural surroundings is drawing unauthorized pictures on buildings and other architectural objects. This manifestation was defined as graffiti. Informational signature becomes the main type of modern vandalism. It is a central semantic segment which is a fixed ambition to integration with a new virtual informative reality peculiar to a post-industrial era. This is a way of overcoming fear of uncertainty and of global sign space and problems of identity in particular political are solved [1]. Graffiti refers to those types of destructions the damages of which are considered as “inevitable losses” and the activity to remove inscriptions is a routine responsibility of government. Urban space busy with graffiti reduces psychological and functional support of the environment. It is known that individuals associate some environmental characteristics with danger and insecurity. Graffiti, like broken glass, rubbish and other features of litter, is perceived as a sign of degradation caused due to weakening mechanisms of social control. It gives rise in people’s trouble, fear and vulnerability. Besides the state of disorder and decline decreases a deterrence threshold of destructive acts and this in turn increases probability of further destructions.

At the same time graffiti has some positive social functions as well. Wall pictures and inscriptions are varieties of communication free from daily and common limits because of its anonymity. They are the method of expressing the way of thinking, conflicts and problems, of the majority of which are latent. But there haven’t been any native researches of wall pictures and inscriptions yet.

The most typical manifestations of illegal behavior include severe assaults of football fans, violence on stadiums and vandal acts committed by groups after the match. There are a lot of incidents connected with football matches all over the world which affect viewers, football clubs and teams, players, referees and coaches. The consequence of them are the riots, group violations of public order and other actions committed by the football fans before, during and after football matches. The analysis of this problem shows that in different countries some fans come to stadiums to commit riots, to accomplish psychological pressure on the match, to provoke opposite fans collisions or to direct aggression to the staff providing law and order.

In recent years while developing and gaining strength domestic football begins to adopt European football not only with different manifestations of love to this national game (attributes, means of noise and visual support their favorite team, etc.) and but with the number of criminological consequences – mass unrests, vandalism acts, riots and walloping among fans of different clubs.

Some scholars interpret these crimes as a special kind of mass riots connected with a number of ruining, injuries and people’s deaths. Football fans’ outrage in and out stadiums take place not only in foreign countries.

The urgent problem of the modern world which suffers from local military conflicts and wars is mass migration of people to other territories. Unfortunately, such migration processes are connected with a great number of manifestations of the contempt for property and disorderly conduct of refugees from war-torn countries. Mostly fugitives from Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Nigeria and Eritrea strive to get to Europe. Main reasons of migration are a threat to life, persecutions on religious grounds, repression and hunger which became a result of permanent civil wars in these countries. Migrants’ acts during their removal leave much to be desired. A number of publications in Internet, news and reports in other mass media draw attention to the way how migrants break moral norms, the laws adopted in countries they remove to and splash aggression demonstrating their contempt and impudence. The main means of their acts are deviation from the «alien order» and the dominance of “the law of crowd”. This problem should be paid attention to sooner otherwise or later migrants will create their own republics and arrange referendums.

Unfortunately in the atmosphere of the threatening growth of the criminality the so called crimes which are not dangerous for society become less relevant and, therefore, we should recognize that vandalism is neither an exact characteristic of the behavior nor a legal category; it is a label which we apply to indentify types of behavior under the certain conditions [3, p. 23]. Bodies of the pretrial investigation and enquiry, courts as well do not pay enough attention to the investigation and prevention crimes connected with vandalism, often leave them without examination forgetting that all of these manifestations have the same origin. Thus society pays a very high price for ignoring this problem. So our task is to study this problem and to develop practical recommendations for the prevention of vandalism and to propose methods of solving this problem to help us not to allow more severe forms of vandalism in future.

References:

1. Belkin, A. (2004). Self-expression and self-affirmation processes in graffiti [Processy samovyrazhenija i samoutverzhdenija v graffiti]. Srednjaja Volga. Volga. pp. 74-79.

2. Goldstein, A. (1996). The psychology of vandalism. New York: Plenum Press.

3. Cohen, S. (1973). Destruction of property: Motives and meanings. London: The Architectural Press.

4. Skorohodova, A. (1998). Graffiti: meaning, motives and perception [Graffіtі: znachennja, motivi, sprijnjattja]. Psychological journal. No. 1. pp. 144-153.

5. Bandurka, A., Zelіns'kij, A. (1996). Vandalism [Vandalism]. Unіversitet vnutrіshnіh sprav. Harkіv. 199 p.