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<title> TV Shows: entertainment or fuelling crime? </title>
In the dawn of the new millennium a new, very modern problem has showed up. Children get to see too much violence on TV. This supposedly affect the children in a negative way, they become more prone to use violence then before etc. The ones that receive the blame for this are the TV-Networks, for broadcasting shows with violence in them. The federal government wants to introduce V-Chips (anti-violence chips) in new TV-sets that will allow parents to cut out programs that they don't want their children to see. This short essay will try to discuss the reasons for the high crime rates among teenagers in America today. And what could be done about it.

	Today's parents work much more then they used to do and the V-Chip and similar solutions of parent censorship present a possibility for parents to take away certain shows from their TVs. They want to protect their children from the violence on TV and the bad influence that it might have on them. But what shows should be excluded? Naturally this will be left up to the parents to decide. As Lynn McReynolds, vice president of media affairs of the National Association of Broadcasters says to Time Magazine "the V chip won't be able to tell the difference between Terminator 2 and Schindlers List", but do we really want our young children to watch Schindlers list? Even though this is an excellent movie it does contain a great deal of violence, and can be very disturbing to see, even for adults. Another item in this discussion that keeps popping up is news-broadcasts. They also include lot's of very strong material that is definitely not suitable for young children. But both Schindlers List and TV-news give the picture that hurting people is not good, it gives a clear picture of the consequences of shooting someone, something that the Mafia movies and Terminator lack. In those movies we never get to see the grieving mothers, the family left behind. 

	It is interesting to compare the United States with the European countries. They are equally well developed and the material on TV is not that different. Even though this is the case severe teenage criminals in the US are much more frequent then teenage criminals in the European countries. So can we blame the TV-Networks? They are showing almost the same things and yet teen-crime rates are much higher in the US then in Europe. A thing that separates the European countries from the US is that in the US there are much more fire arms in circulation, this has created an easy accessibility to weapons, for those who want them. Another great problem that the US has that European countries do not share (in the same degree) is the great gap between social classes. For some people born in the "wrong place" their is no bright future, and the only way that they might make much money is through criminality. Could this criminality be fuelled by the TV-Shows and movies? Maybe not the crimes in themselves but the way in which they are performed are often inspired from movies and TV. 

	If we want to fight crimes it is my opinion that we need to fight the reasons that crimes occur, and not only punish the perpetrators. If we seriously wish to fight gangs, drugs and teen criminality the best way to do this is to offer these children an alternative from the start. Give them opportunities to create a career and live a good honest life. Try to bring the two parts of today's society closer together. This will cost a lot of money, and will take a long time but in the long run America would benefit from this in many ways, financially as well as having created a good place for its citizens to live. TV violence does play a part in today's high criminality rates among young Americans, and if reasonable censorship can reduce this it is a step in the right direction, but let's not forget the reasons to the conflicts that cause the violence.
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