Assessing youth unemployment and property crimes in public transportation systems:

Abstract

One of the problems faced by passengers when they are on the route through road transport systems via road stops and terminals are theft, robbery, and fraud crimes, and those who are suspected to engage in such crimes are mostly unemployed youth who engages on disguised jobs. Therefore the aim of this research study was to examine the influence of youth unemployment on property crime in public transport systems at road terminals in Arusha city, Specific objectives of this study were to investigate how youths engaged in touts practice in the road terminals influence passengers’ property theft, to determine the extent to which youths’ vendor practices in the road terminals influence passengers’ property fraud, to analyze how youth campings for sports in the terminals impact passengers’ property security, and to examine how youths’ engaged in bus agency influence passengers’ property security at the road terminals. Sample size of 150 used in the study out of which all respondents participated towards the accumulation of data, the target population for this study was passengers, bus ticket agents, touts, vendors and youths camping for sports on bus terminals and stops. Descriptive research design were used where qualitative and quantitative research approaches were employed and data were analysed by using SPSS model. The study findings show that youth touts, bus agents and youth vendors at bus terminals influenced increase in crimes. The study shows that travel agents leads to fraud like selling of fake tickets, selling of inflated tickets and selling of occupied seats at bus terminals, bus terminal vendors influenced fraud as people are sold fake products while touts engage in stealing and robbery in open and hidden places. The study concludes that there is a need for the Government to build a wall surrounding bus terminals at Arusha as it was found that there are no restrictions on entry and exits in bus terminals at Arusha region and recommend that there is a need to provide identification cards to limit entry and exit as well as modifying terminal infrastructures.