By general definition, a crime is a wrong doing against society, proclaimed by law. All acts of disobeying the law are crimes. Be it an assault or embezzlement one has committed is wrong. Yet we have learned values and morals from our environs, which gave us concepts of the degree of harm pertaining to a particular crime.

From our culture, our concept of crime is usually that of a physical one. We as a society, generally conjure images of a personal assault on oneself when defining the concept of a crime. Very rarely would ones first connotation of crime be of an executive of a large firm stealing money from the business. In our culture, generally we define our concepts by our surroundings. Society is more frequently exposed to street crimes. It is very rare that a day goes by that we do not learn of a murder, physical attack or robbery through the media. These street crimes affect our neighbourhoods and the social order everyday. Those crimes are contributing to the destruction of the moral fabric of our cities, our streets and society. Street crime is the most harmful of crimes, it is responsible for the disintegration of society as we know it.

To demonstrate the harm caused by society by street crime, one has to look no further than to inner city neighbourhoods. Street crimes are responsible for injuries, death, sexual assaults and the loss of personal property through force. They can also be attributed to the decline of local business and the drop in education and pride in ones communities as well. In the lower economic neighbourhoods, many resort to crime for financial reasons.

Members of the community sell drugs or rob as means of support. This is the major reason why street crime is so harmful.

As if one looks around Rawalpindi city, incidents of street crimes are on rise in bustling in Satellite Town and Dhoke Paracha as young boys on motorcycles without number plates are on a spree of snatching cell phones, cash and even jewellery.

Many of these incidents go unreported, as the victims allege that they are taking place with the collusion of law enforcers. The people generally assume that the criminals behind street crimes do have strong backing, as without ‘backing’ they cannot even imagine committing such daring crimes in broad daylight. They say they will be wasting time by going to police station to lodge a complaint. They said that young people on bikes without registration number plates are freely moving and looting people without any fear of being reprimanded by law enforcers.

Mrs Adnan, a neighbour of the scribe in a sobbing tone said that her bangles were snatched by two bike riding youth in broad daylight. “I was going to a tailor in the neighbourhood in the afternoon, when I was stopped by two bikers in the middle of a street, which was unfortunately deserted, my son, who is a toddler was with me, it came as shock for me, as I could not understand what is happening and what should I do. They asked me to handover the gold bangles, which I tried to remove from my wrists, but they were not coming off and one of the boys forcibly removed them from my hand, injuring it in the process. At that moment I was only worried about the safety of my son, as they could have done anything to him or me, if I had resisted.”

Police high ups claim to have constituted Mohafiz force to check the rising incidents of street crimes like cell phone and purse snatching, but the ratio of such crimes in rising day by day and police fail to come up with a solid plan to control the crime.