Police Commissioner Blames Knife Crime On Video Games

Police Commissioner Blames Knife Crime On Video Games

It’s that old cookie again, this time coming from an interview with Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione in Australia. He believes that youngsters are being desensitised by hours of exposure to brutal video games that reward the player for such acts as murder, rape and theft. This interview comes after a rise in knife crime amongst youngsters in Australia over the past few months.

Speaking to The Australian Telegraph he said,

How can it not affect you if you’re a young adolescent growing up in an era where to be violent is almost praiseworthy, where you engage in virtual crime on a daily basis and many of these young people (do) for hours and hours on end.

That’s not going to affect the vast majority but it’s only got to affect one or two and what have you got? You’ve got some potentially really disturbed young person out there who’s got access to weapons like knives or is good with the fist, can go out there and almost live that life now in the streets of modern Australia. That’s concerning.

Arguments in the past have been made for parents who buy violent games for their children, who are not old enough to purchase them in the first place. Or that films and music have just as much of a role to play in desensitisation as video games do. What are your thoughts on the Police Commissioners comments?

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