Former hoodlums need jobs: Rights activist

Former hoodlums need jobs: Rights activist

JAKARTA (JP): The government should help repentant street hoodlums find employment because joblessness will only drive them back to their old habits, a human rights activist said yesterday.

After providing vocational training to the street thugs, the government should provide them with jobs, said Maj. Gen. (ret) Soegiri, a member of the National Commission on Human Rights.

Soegiri said that it was mainly unemployment which had caused many people to become hoodlums and that, therefore, the creation of jobs would be the best remedy for the social problem.

He acknowledged that the public, notably employers, might be reluctant to accept rehabilitated hoodlums.

"But everyone should realize that street crime is not only the police's problem but that of everyone in the society. So people should put forward ideas about how to solve the problem," he was quoted by Antara as saying in Lampung.

In the continuing war against street hoodlums, police across the country have rounded up thousands of people in major cities. Many have been released while others have undergone vocational training in military training centers.

The crackdown on hoodlums was prompted by the murder of a police officer in a Jakarta shopping complex last month. However, the military has insisted that the operation is merely an intensification of an ongoing war against street violence.

Soegiri proposed that companies tightly screen former hoodlums seeking work with them.

"Companies need to be selective so that they will not go bankrupt as a result of (former hoodlum) employees reverting to bad habits," he said. (29)