By ANEEKA SIMONIS
THE criminal consequences of tagging were laid out in black and white for a number of Cardinia Shire students who took part in a recent pilot graffiti education program.
Students from Grade 5 to Year 9 at Cockatoo Primary School, Beaconhills College Pakenham campus, Pakenham Secondary College, Kooweerup Secondary College and Emerald Secondary College were given first-hand demonstrations about the negative impacts of tagging.
The program, delivered through council’s Community Risk and Emergency Management team, involved demonstrations of the social, financial and criminal consequences of picking up a spray can.
Situations included a tagger being charged by police in front of his distraught mother and a young person giving in to peer pressure to engage in graffiti vandalism. Scenarios in which young people made the right choice were also portrayed.
Former Department of Corrections criminologist and Central Ward Councillor Jodie Owen said the program targeted young people at an age when they were likely to be experimenting, forming attitudes and being influenced by others.
“The program raises possibilities many young people may not have considered in relation to engaging in graffiti. The students learnt how police use photographs of tags to gather evidence against a tagger or that taggers could be forced to pay the clean-up bill, even years later,” she said.
“The sessions were high-energy and really powerful. You only had to look at the students’ faces to see that valuable messages about graffiti were getting through.”
Cr Owen said graffiti vandals, usually male, begin tagging from 12 years of age which often leads to a lifestyle of life chasing bigger and bigger criminal rushes.
“Those that subscribe to this life get a rush out of it. They start taking more risks to get a bigger rush and in most cases we find drugs are involved,” she said.
This pilot project was funded through the Victorian Government’s Community Crime Prevention Program.
