Abstract

Background: The kuluna phenomenon is a shape of juvenile delinquency which continues and terrorizes the City of Kinshasa, the main characteristics of which are violence, theft, and sometimes rape in teenagers' band. Objective: this study aims at describing the opinions moved forward by the students of the ISP/Gombe as the causes of the juvenile criminality in Kinshasa. Results: it emerges from our investigations that the questioned students consider several causes of the kuluna, the lack of occupation of which is in pole position (28,81 %), followed by the bad education (24,58 %), the poverty (13,56 %), the not schooling of the children (12,71 %) as well as bad influence (11,86 %); while the absence of the parents (3,39 %), the demonic ownership as well as the bad governance (1,69 %) close the list. Conclusion: We should attack thus not only the behavior young deviants of kuluna, but olso resolve the problem of the causes and multi-form or multisectorial factors. And Psychologist must be associated on the questions of kuluna behavior's, as researcher, psycho-educational therapist, expert, assessor, trainer or informant.

1. Introduction

The kuluna phenomenon is characterized by violence, rob and sometimes rape at the young people in organized groups. It is about a juvenile violence of streets which insecure the City of Kinshasa for approximately thirty years. Public authorities took and executed diverse measures to get through it, but the exactions always continue in certain districts of the Congolese Capital.

According to Jean-Marie Domenach ¹ the violence, this typically human conduct, does not any more succeed in justifying itself. His appropriate logic does not seem to be any more able to contained. When the ultimate possibilities of the violence equivalent to destruction of the humanity, it becomes insufficient to demand limitations and controls.

Otto Klineberg ² considers that violence is neither universal, nor inevitable, nor instinctive; some individuals and certain groups are strongly inclined to violence while others are carried there hardly.

Éric Marlière ³ noted that the delinquent practices constitute the everyday life of the popular worlds; and Nathalie Gamache ⁴ specifies that the juvenile delinquency is a complex problem. It is however possible to conceive this phenomenon as the result of the interaction of several variables of the environment and the individual.

The problem of juvenile delinquency is thus not only a specific question in the City of Kinshasa or in the RD Congo, it is well and truly about a world social or socio-educational fact; and there are many authors who from the end of the XIXth century developed explanatory theories ^{5, 6}.

Kuluna is not a Kinshasa registered trademark of a deviants’ behavior series of young people. It is simply another name of the juvenile criminality, because in the history of the young crime, there were young people who would resort to modus operandi and/or organizational similar to those of the kuluna of Kinshasa.

The modus operandi of kuluna is not either a practice appropriate to the young offenders of Kinshasa. The violent behavior of these young people is not only universal, but also natural; they are thus observable at all the young delinquent's, even if there are nuances appropriate to every environment (machetes, run in single file, …).

For example, the case of juvenile delinquency around 1900 in Paris which Régis Pierret ⁷ reports: according to Henri Fouquier, a journalist of the newspaper Le Matin, the Apache are pale, almost always beardless young men, and the favorite ornament of their hairstyle is called sideburns. All the same, they kill you their man as the most authentic savages, except that their victims are not foreigners’ invaders, but their French fellow countrymen. They go as far as cutting in four or five pieces the man whom they killed. Other times, as we saw it the day before yesterday, they content with getting away the neck to a passer-by and with crashing a knife in the stomach of another one.

The increase of the juvenile delinquency characterizes the end of the XIXth century and the beginning of the XXth century. All the industrialized countries, the United States, Germany, Russia, Canada, England, Italy and many other countries are still confronted with this phenomenon ⁷.

The African societies cross, since almost two decades, a multisectorial crisis on an unprecedented scale of which they have difficulty in going out. The young people (from 40 to 50 % of the urban population according to countries) - "Lifeblood" of States submitted to the drastic conditionality of the structural adjustment - were particularly affected by the job shortage ⁸.

But the causes of a psychosocial phenomenon are differently often perceived according to the categories of people. There is always a dose of subjectivity in any perception; so authorities’ politico-administratives, parents, kuluna or other categories of people as the students, do not give the same value to the various causes of the juvenile delinquency, and the trend is to incriminate the others.

The politico-administratives authorities’ could well quote the causes of the juvenile delinquency as follows: irresponsibility of parents, irresponsibility of young people (seen of which other young people manage to take care and to go out of difficult situations of life) …

The parents, from their part, would quote more the irresponsibility of politico-administratives authorities’, unemployment, poverty, and lack of play area for their children, bad character of today young people who copy blindness the models of violent behavior …

Kuluna, as for those, could well quote, doubtless, in the first place the irresponsibility of politico-administratives authorities’, even their parents, poverty, unemployment, lack of activity … What about students? This study will raise, in increasing order, the list of causes such as perceived by some students of the ISP/Gombe.

As social phenomenon, the kuluna is at first a major educational question in which the psychologist has to find solutions. Thus it is a problem socio-educational psychology which interests closely the psychologist; and this one has, doubtless, not insignificant roles and missions in the fight against this young abnormality.

As regards roles of the psychologist in the fight against the phenomenon kuluna, he can be, in particular, a researcher, a psycho-educational therapist, an expert, an assessor, a trainer or an informant on the questions of behavior of young abnormalities behaviors.

About missions, the psychologist can fight against the kuluna phenomenon by exercising diverse responsibilities, among which the following ones.

As researcher on the kuluna, he will get down in:

- Analyze and/or study the causes and the factors of behavior young deviants;

- Describe the behavior young deviants (nature, degree, frequency, and epidemiology);

- Estimate the consequences of the behavior young deviants (victims, kuluna and their respective close friends).

As psycho-educational therapist, the psychologist is going to develop, to apply or estimate programs of coverage educational psychology of young people at the behavior deviants. And as assessor, the psychologist can design, adapt or administer psychometrics tests of measures of the behavior young deviants.

As psychological expert, he will owe:

- Enlighten the magistrates and lawyers on the behavior young deviants;

- Detect and/or diagnose the behavior young deviants;

- Detect and/or diagnose the psychological traumas and the diverse consequences undergone by the victims of the young violence and their close relations.

As trainer or informant, the psychologist will take care:

- To inform and/or to make sensitive on the precautionary measures of fight against the behavior young deviants;

- To train on the detection, the diagnosis and the therapy or care of deviants young behaviors.

Jacqueline Finkelstein-Rossi ⁹ brings back that the staff is formed in diverse programs of coverage of the young offenders, the authors of grave offences:

- In the method ART (Aggression Replacement Training) for a better control of the aggressiveness;

- In the cognitivo-behavioral therapies (learn to face negative feelings and to exceed the violent behavior);

- In the treatment program in twelve stages for the drug addicts, etc.

The main objective of this study thus is to describe the opinions moved forward by the students of the ISP/Gombe as the causes of the juvenile criminality in Kinshasa. Objective to place in the very first field of intervention of the psychologist with the young people in the behavior deviants, worth knowing, to analyze and/or to study the causes and the factors of behavior young deviants.

Reviewing the American works dedicated to the crime, Kornhauser ¹⁰ presents three different perspectives:

- The theory of the tension (of Robert King Merton): the man rather tends to conform to the established rulers, and it is the pressure of dissatisfied desires but justifiable who urges him to break them;

- The theory of the social control (of Travis Warner Hirschi): the crime results from an unfinished or deficient socialization, which did not succeed in containing and in adjusting the human passions. This theory thus emphasizes the control which the society exercises on his members, and echos the durkheimienne conception of the human nature;

- The theory of the subcultures deviants (of Richard A. Cloward and Lloyd E. Ohlin): the standards of conduct are not uniform (in certain groups prevail opposite standards to those of the society which includes them, and during the socialization their members teach it practices deviants).

Our study is based on the theory of the subcultures deviants, because the inhabitants of Kinshasa, kuluna other citizen, live in two castes: dominant versus dominated, powerful-weak, rich-poor man.

As we specified before, that the use of the violence is not the monopoly of kuluna, but that it is a model of social behavior of Kinshasa where every holder of power violent his subordinates or his dependent. And Camille Dugrand ¹¹ underlined that "if shégués or Kuluna value by the strength and establish urban models of use of the physical capital to show some power or subject his peers, us find this model of management of the situations in diverse degrees in the heart of the company from Kinshasa".

If for Donatien Olela Nonga ¹², in the street, children live in band, some survive by finding small works, others join violent bands, called kuluna. On the other hand, according to Héritier Bahati Bahati Mujinya ¹³, kuluna is a category of young offenders characterized by the practice of the violence with bladed weapons. And to Sylvain Shomba Kinyamba ¹⁴ to specify that kuluna identifies young people evolving in the idleness or in the gangsterim and which lead a lifestyle resting on the violence against others to intimidate, to steal and to dispossess somebody of its good.

We retain of these three authors that kuluna send back to a young band, to a juvenile delinquency, to a violence by bladed weapons, to an idleness or an inactivity, in the theft and in the terror. So, a kuluna is very young which evolves band, without occupation, and being engaged at leisure in the theft and in the violence of the peaceful citizens or the poor storekeepers’ lambdas there.

Sylvain Shomba ¹⁵ note as well as these young depraved persons are mainly recruited among shégués, children of street of Kinshasa but also among certain amateur delinquents of the martial arts. Gangs of districts, these often given drugs delinquents, sow the terror and the sadness among the population.

A certain opinion teaches that the word kuluna come from the Portuguese term "culuna" which means parade. The concept was exported from Angola by the traffickers of diamond among whom some came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, mainly from the city of Kinshasa. Often used in careers, "culuna" indicate a troop or servicemen's patrol to which the mission is to pursue and to skin the diamond dealers who, for the greater part, work in the illegality. During these operations, numbers of people underwent assault and battery, even the death ¹³.

The phenomenon kuluna can get on as a set of behavior deviants which the young people evolving band there demonstrate. Behavior characterized, in particular, by the deep free and unmotivated violence, the terror, the envy to dominate and the sadism, even the envy to kill to extract just a telephone, a watch or a necklace that certain teenagers express in the respect often foreigners or those whom they consider as enemies.

Political, administrative and economic capital of the RD CONGO, Kinshasa, with a population planned to more or less 9.500.000 inhabitants, faces particularly a situation of insecurity which deteriorated since 2009 with the outbreak of the phenomenon kuluna ¹⁵.

It is at about the 2000s when young offenders terrorize the City of Kinshasa, by hurting, by amputating, or killing every person they meet on the road, by means of bladed weapons (specially machetes, screwdriver or razor blade), with the aim of robbery or extorting money.

According to Jean Pierre Mpiana Tshitenge wa Masengu ¹⁶, the municipality of Ngaba is thought of as one of the first municipalities of Kinshasa to have lived the phenomenon kuluna. The author noted the presence of kuluna gangs very known with intense criminal activities to their prize list in almost all the districts of this municipality going to four gangs by district. He relates for example:

-Four gangs of kuluna in Mopulu district (named Bana Bolafa, Bad boys, Les zoulous and Kansas), as well as other four in Bulambemba district (Ecurie mbeli mbeli, Les Zoulous Kisanola, Bana Bagdad and Armée rouge);

- Three gangs in Luyi district (Boroti, Banga Moyo and Sans Pitié); as well as three in the district Baobab (Deux fois te, Eufor and Onu-britanique);

- Two gangs in Kianza district (Tembe na Nzambe and Bonza bor);

- One gang in Mateba district (Bana cinq sur cinq).

Quoting the 2012 annual Criminal police of Kinshasa, Shomba et al. ¹⁷ enumerate 15 municipalities as reservoirs of kuluna. It is about Matete, Ngaba, Makala, Kisenso, Limete, Kalamu, Barumbu, Kinshasa, Bumbu, Ngiri-ngiri, Bandalungwa, Masina, Kimbanseke, Kintambo and Ngaliema. And each of these municipalities counts a number of bands of young delinquents says “écurie".

After data analysis on kuluna gangs in Kinshasa presented by Sylvain Shomba and al. ¹⁷, we found that the municipality of Matete has 13 gangs of kuluna (that is 17,33 %), Kalamu 12 gangs (16 %), Ngaba 8 gangs (10,67 %), while Limete, Makala and N’djili counts respectively 6 gangs (8 %), then Kimbanseke and Masina 5 gangs (6,67 %) of Kuluna.

Certain names of gangs already shine on the criminality of these young people: Zulu (a Bantu ethnic group of Southern Africa who had superior military tactics during the reign of Shaka and fought different battles with an incredible violence and brutality); Bad-boys, Bana mabe, Mbwa mabe (violent, aggressive, merciless young people); Mbeli-mbeli (knife and machete are bladed weapons used by Kuluna); Kibomango (a military training center in Kinshasa); Soweto (Township of South Africa symbolized by protests led by black school children); Flamme, Moto epela (the fire symbolizes aggression,).

For Sylvain Shomba ¹⁵, kuluna groups organized into their districts through teenagers' bands. In these groupings, we find subjects of various levels of training (uncultivated, primary level, high school even university). Sometimes, it is young people who finished their studies at a determined level (high school, professional, university). As for their socioeconomic origin, kuluna results from all the social strata. Their number is nevertheless higher in the disadvantaged districts.

These bands of young people make more and more aggressive through the various municipalities where we can recover, in particular, according to corresponding testimonies, several cases of loss of life in the assessment of their misdeeds ¹⁵.

At first, these forms of mass juvenile criminality aimed only at confrontations for reasons of honor, conflict regarding friendship girl-boy, and especially the sports adversity with the proliferation of the clubs of the martial arts (judo, boxing, karate) the musical adversity, because the city of Kinshasa was dominated by sports and music. Not long after, several young bands settled down in almost all the municipalities called collectively "écuries", it is the case of «Bazulu de Matonge", "les Anglais de Yolo^{1} " ¹³.

Let us remind that the violence is the threat or the deliberate use of the physical strength or the power against oneself, against others or against a group or a community which pulls or risks strongly to pull a trauma, a death, psychological damage, evil-development or hardships ⁶.

The violence arises when the word is lacking, the act so becomes the symptom of a faintness ¹⁸. And the violence of kuluna can be described under two aspects: psychological and moral, in touch with three main aspects enumerated by Jean-Marie Domenach ¹: a) psychological (explosion of strength which takes an unreasonable and often murderous aspect; b) morale (attack in the properties and in the freedom of others); c) politics (use of the strength to seize the power or divert him towards illicit purposes).

Otto Klineberg ² distinguishes four types of violence studied by the psychologist:

- The individual violence includes the manslaughter the related crimes, mainly holds attention of the jurist and the criminologist;

- The collective violence, shows itself in the riots and the revolutions, worries most of the time the historian, the sociologist and the political analyst;

- The instrumental violence (or aggression), exercised in the intention decided to reach determined purposes;

- The impulsive violence represented by impulsive reactions which lead to the riots accompanying street protests, or result from confrontations between students and policemen.

While for Yves Marguerat ¹⁹, the diversity of the violence phenomenon obliges to introduce other subdivisions, according to the actors (individual or collective) and ways of functioning (spontaneous, organized or systematic), so distinguishing a violence: individual spontaneous, individual organized, individual systematic, collective spontaneous, collective organized, collective systematic.

And kuluna practice the collective violence organized in band which Yves Marguerat ¹⁹ defines as the violence where the crime is really organized, with a coherent device and branched out infiltrated in the heart of the society structures. It is the case of gangsterism of cities, bandits of big ways in campaigns, pirates of the sea...

For Julie Rizi ²⁰, the behavior considered as violent insults, created from derived variables questions asked to the young people would be in particular:

1) Have participated in a battle;

2) Have attacked somebody;

3) Have threatened somebody;

4) Have used a weapon during a battle;

5) Have used a knife during a battle;

6) Have used a firearm;

7) Have touched somebody (sexually) even if there is disagreement of the person;

8) Have forced somebody to have a sexual relation;

9) Have beaten somebody in the point where this person had to receive medical care;

10) Have fought with somebody.

For Manuel Boucher ²¹, the violence phenomenon of can be measured by a scale establishing a containing of eight degrees:

- Degree 1: violence in bands, divested of anti-institutional character (vandalism, raids in the businesses), rodeos of stolen cars then persons affected by the fire, villainous crime in band against the private individuals, fights, settlings of scores;

- Degree 2: provocations against the guards, verbal and gestural insults against the adults, furtive vandalism against the public goods;

- Degree 3: physical attacks on the institutional agents (fire brigades, servicemen, controllers, guards, teachers, social workers) other than police;

- Degree 4: assemblages during interventions of police, phone threats to the policemen, stoning of patrol cars, demonstrated in front of police stations, go hunting to the dealers;

- Degree 5: vindictive assemblages slowing down the interventions, invasion of the police station;

- Degree 6: physical attacks against the policemen, open attack of police station, antipolice ambushes;

- Degree 7: open, massive vandalism (devastation of shop windows, cars, jets of Molotov cocktails) at a generally brief time, and without confrontations with the policemen when these arrive on the scene on behalf of 15 at 30 young people;

- Degree 8: guerrilla warfare, riot, massive devastations followed by confrontations with law enforcement, repetition 3 in 5 nights in a row, on behalf of 50 to 200 young people.

Sylvain Shomba ¹⁴ reports that the 2006 Archives of Rapid Intervention Police (PIR) indicate acts on the juvenile criminality in Kinshasa among which i) malicious destruction (22,83 %); ii) assaults and intentional injuries (19,43 %); iii) public nuisances (18,29 %); iv) extortions of properties (15,71 %); v) threats (11,71 %); vi) use of bladed weapons (9 %); vii) illegal possession of firearms (2,86 %).

Things being what they are, the Kinshasa young violence such as described by the Police report is only in the first degree of the violence scale established by Manuel Boucher. The behavior deviants of Kinshasa young inhabitants are not very violent, because it exists of more violent there.

Lode Walgrave, mentioned by Corinne Sarrazin-Auriol ²², who allow to differentiate three types of crime:

- the crime of symptom: certain behavior of young people is understandable at first instance by acute crises of life, the abandonment, dysfunctions of the system or by certain bio-psychological disorders. Thus this type of crime gathers a heterogeneous range of individual and relational problems, it is very early often spotted in the middle school;

- The temporary crime: the juvenile delinquency seems connected to the psychosocial conditions of the adolescent age. It is a part of the collection by the teenager of its identity, of her social position. She appears at the right place in the indicators of incident of school life, establishments manage them almost to the everyday life;

- The crime of precariousness: the teenagers who are engaged in it show deeper psychosocial phenomena connected to their condition of social precariousness, who holds at the same time the current situation and their future prospects.

So, the juvenile delinquency of Kinshasa, said phenomenon kuluna, is a crime of precariousness, because kuluna shows behavior deviants bound more to their conditions of socio-educational precariousness and to their uncertain future.

It will be necessary to indicate that the urban young violence is an old domain of research, and it counts several studies as well as scientific results approved in the description of this psychosocial plague, the research for its causes, the determination of its consequences as well as the proposal of preventive and fight strategies.

Nevertheless, the research on the urban and criminal violence in Black Africa is relatively recent for a very simple reason: most of the cities in South of Sahara were based by the colonizer hardly one century ago ²³. And a fast review of the literature indicates us the existence of several studies on the urban young violence in Kinshasa. Here are four studies made by Donatien Olela, Sylvain Shomba and Jean Pierre Mpiana.

In its study on the “Approche sociohistoire de la violence urbaine dans la Ville de Kinshasa^{2}", Donatien Olela Nonga ¹², presented the process of the urban violence to understand better its reality and its coherence within the Congolese society.

By means of the Social-history, the author found:

A) Three forms of urban violence in the history of Kinshasa (1° the bill, 2° the shegue and 3° the kuluna);

B) Links sociohistorics of some forms of violence of the past and current (1° massive exodus of the populations; 2° place of opposition even of contesting of the politic power established since the colonial period);

C) Conjunction of several identical, but different social factors tenure of importance (1° weakness of the structures of integration, 2° failure of the politeness with its corollaries, 3° crowding, 4° unemployment, 5° weakness of the social control process, etc.).

Sylvain Shomba Kinyamba ¹⁵, in his study on the "Violence juvénile à Kinshasa: contexte et prévention possible^{3}", has:

- Determined, through the opinions expressed by the investigated, the perception that the Inhabitants of Kinshasa are made on the kuluna;

- Reflected about the way of preventing this violence to offer to the Inhabitants of Kinshasa the peace and the security which they legally need.

And by means of 30 focuses groups, his conclusion is that the kuluna phenomenon concerns young people who given drugs, and who terrorize the population. This shape of young violence in the City of Kinshasa finds some explanation in several combined factors among which the precarious living conditions of the households and the absence of supervision concerning young people.

In one any other study, entitled "Gangstérisme juvénile à Kinshasa: Soubassement et illusions – désillusions liées aux stratégies de lutte^{4}", Sylvain Shomba Kinyamba ¹⁴ has:

- Disgraced the emergence context of the kuluna phenomenon;

- Drawn up the profile of the actors kuluna and their logics and types of actions;

- Analyzed the illusions and the disappointments connected to the means of fight against the kuluna phenomenon.

And by qualitative conversations as well as direct observations of the target groups, he concluded that the kuluna is emanated and not chromosome criminality. Its context of emergence, the profile of his actors, the logics and the types of actions send back to the Kinshasa social contingencies.

The eradication of this horrible kuluna phenomenon involves, to be effective, a deep questioning of its supports: that public authorities restore the law for a standard of living being enough for the citizen Congolese, that the citizen Congolese gets rid thanks to the civics, of a mentality hostile to the development which imposes him this time.

In "Les va et vient des kuluna entre les centres de détention et la cité à l’aune des opinions des habitants de la commune de Ngaba^{5}", Jean Pierre Mpiana Tshitenge Wa Masengu ¹⁶ analyzed the opinions of the population of Kinshasa on them go and come from kuluna between the city and the detention centers.

And by means of the interview guide, he found that them goes and comes from kuluna between detention centers and the city are owed in:

- The bad governance and the dysfunction of the public institutions;

- The not coverage of citizens’ security by the government;

- The corruption of the Congolese judicial system;

- The ignorance of the procedure and the resignation of the victims;

- The complicity between the elements of police elements, the judicial authorities and the kuluna.

2. Materials and Methods

The students questioned result from the pedagogy’s’ high Institute of Gombe, (in acronym: ISP/Gombe). This one is a public institution of the Democratic Republic of the Congo situated in Kinshasa. He consists of ten departments, and one of which is educational psychology. And ISP/Gombe is situated in full city center of Kinshasa exactly on crossing of avenues Père BOKA and KISANGANI in the municipality of Gombe, in the city province of Kinshasa ²⁴.

Originated from Teke, a local language, Kinshasa means: a little Salt Market (insasa, insa or insa-insa). This name became official after the country's independence in 1966, replacing that of Leopoldville, which was given in 1881 by the explorer Henry Morton Stanley in honor of the King of the Belgians, Leopold II, whose service he was, noted Basile Mulwani Makelele, Patrick Litalema Libote and Boniface Aspan A Kasas ²⁵.

The City-province of Kinshasa, a 9.965 km² surface, occupies a zone more important than the only City. Indeed, the urban area occupies only the part the West of the Province, the South of the municipalities and zone of hills remaining by place a countryman, and the oriental municipalities, N'Sele and Maluku, are countrymen. So Maluku occupies to it alone 79 % of Kinshasa territory ²⁶.

Kinshasa is largely inhabited by people from all provinces of the DRC and various countries of the world ²⁷. It is therefore a cosmopolitan city that knows an exponential demography estimated to date more than twelve million inhabitants.

In the 50s, writes Manda Tchebwa, the youth of Kinshasa built up to itself a dichotomous image: with on one hand, a certainly acculturated young fringe, but having lost a part of its essential moral values, and on the other hand, an elite in power, schooled under the lighting of a positive morality, aspiring to a better social integration ¹².

According to Sylvain Shomba ¹⁵, the City of Kinshasa knows big problems of development. Of these, we align, in particular:

- Weakness of the consumption and mediocrity of the living conditions of very numerous households consecutive to the lo purchasing power;

- Decay of the road infrastructures and difficulties of public transportation in spite of the launch for one year, of the transport company in common "Transco";

- Prevalence of the unemployment;

- Education of uninsured base for all;

- Precariousness of mother and child health’s;

- Absence of environmental protection and the trend to the extension of erosions;

- Insufficiency and irregularity of the electrical supply in and drinking water service;

- Low access to basic social services;

- Low promotion of the kind;

- Climate of insecurity;

- Prevalence of a festive life;

- Proliferation of informal activities for survival;

- Hyper religiosity of the mass which results in the obscurantism;

- Informality which spreads through all the sectors of life;

- Political turbulence of the leaders which engenders the insecurity, etc.

Let us remind that our study sample is constituted by students of ISP/Gombe in Kinshasa which well, besides, the characteristics in the table below.

Our study sample counts 62 students among whom, 30 women and 32 men, evolving in various sectors of studies among which English, Management and school Administration, Geography, Computing, Educational and vocational guidance as well as Commercial and administrative Sciences.

The data were collected by means of the technique of the questionnaire. Concretely, it was a question of putting both questions relative to the notion of the kuluna and to its causes to every student inclined to answer it. Energy from a subject to the other one in the court of the ISP/Gombe, this is the way our sample consists gradually.

Let us note that certain subjects refused categorically to answer both questions because they said, they are not kuluna, thus do not master the reasons which urge certain young people to act so.

3. Results

We are going to present in both boards which follow the answers of our subjects of investigation on the notion of the kuluna as well as the causes to the hatching of this phenomenon.

In reading the Table 3, kuluna is perceived by the students investigated more as the bandit (84,42 %), a thief (12,99 %) and sometimes a tramp (2,6 %). So, for it almost majority of our subjects of investigation, the kuluna is a bandit. But not any, it is very young bandit often operating in the daytime, openly and publicly.

The Table 4 informs that the questioned students consider several causes of kuluna, the lack of occupation which is in pole position (28,81 %), followed by the bad education (24,58 %) and the poverty (13,56 %), the not schooling of children (12,71 %) as well as bad influence (11,86 %); while the absence of the parents (3,39 %), the demonic possession as well as the bad governance (1,69 %) enclose the list.

4. Discussion

The kuluna is thus collected as a young bandit by the majority of our questioned subjects. This perception was also evoked by Héritier Bahati ¹³ when he saw in the kuluna a band of armed thieves, a youth sacrificed by the parents, for lack of ways to earn a living. Again Héritier Bahati ¹³ who informed that kuluna violate, extort, plunder and hurt peaceful citizens.

So, these young bandits evolve in organized group whom Manuel Boucher ²¹ qualifies as Band of hooligans, as thieves (gangs), even as dangerous band. So kuluna is a violent and aggressive band which Sylvain Shomba et al. ¹⁷ presents as army mainly of machetes.

As regards factors and causes, the juvenile delinquency has it of all kinds, and the young delinquents are act all inevitably on base of the same motivations. However, the City of Kinshasa is a particular environment, and present a series of causes and factors so particular to its juvenile criminality.

The lack of activity of young people, their unemployment, their lack or the insufficiency of frame and blooming evoke in several studies ^{7, 15, 20}. Problem in which Jean Pierre Mpiana ¹⁶ proposes the creation of jobs to welcome all the persons at a loose end who swell the ranks of kuluna.

We found the educational problems as other cause or factor of the juvenile delinquency. The bad education and the not schooling announce educational problems on the base of the kuluna. Julie Rizi ²⁰, Régis Pierret ⁷ and Sylvain Shomba ¹⁵ evoke in particular the illiteracy and the training unsuitable as factors of behavior young deviants.

Indeed, the not schooling is a major factor in the hatching of kuluna phenomenon, and the educational conditions of access or frame (freshly school, unsuitable programs or less attractive, redoubling …) are so much his explanatory tentacles.

So, we found the poverty among the causes of the kuluna. The poverty of families or the domestic low income as well as the difficult living conditions cause the juvenile delinquency ^{7, 13, 15, 20}. More recent studies, for example, Mark Lipsey and James Derzon, mentioned by Caroline Gimenez and Catherine Blatier ²⁸, from a meta-analysis of thirty-four independent longitudinal inquiries, grant a place important for the influence of social inequalities on the juvenile delinquency.

However, Marc LeBlanc mentioned by Caroline Gimenez and Catherine Blatier ²⁸, listed around thirty inquiries dealing with the question on the socioeconomic level and the crime, among which three quarters indicate a non-existent or unimportant relation between crime and socioeconomic level, whether it is for samples of conventional teenagers or teenagers legalized. Consequently, the poorest would not be inevitably the most delinquent.

And according to Jacqueline Finkelstein-Rossi ⁹, the researches show it, there is no direct link between unemployment and/or precariousness (presented for a long time as cause of the crime) and behavior deviants.

Parents' absence (because divorced, dead or incapable) constitute a handicap in the harmonious development of the children ^{15, 20}. And the crime becomes more marked in an environment without parental control. Julie Rizi ²⁰ so moves forward the solution of the family supervision, insisting that " more there is of family supervision less the delinquent behavior is present". Jean Pierre Mpiana ¹⁶ proposes simply the restoration of the family as basic unit of the nation, so that he is able to assure the protection of its offspring. While Régis Pierret ⁷ underlines that in a prospect of protection, the minor will be put back to his family under certain conditions or placed in an institution welcoming only minors.

For Caroline Gimenez and Catherine Blatier ²⁸ the parents appear as the first authority, which is responsible for guiding the cognitive, emotional and behavioral development of the child.

But according to Jacqueline Finkelstein-Rossi ⁹, we know today that "most of the time the crime finds its origin in families which know no major or grave dysfunction but which on the other hand are in the incapacity to ensure a control over the activities of their child".

So, Frédéric Jésu ²⁹ concluded that the parents are well the first ones but not the only responsible ones for the education of their children: neither of his contents, nor especially the context in which they dispense it to them, nor transgressions of which they sometimes fail to protect them. So, regarding education and even regarding crime, the parents are not the only source of the problems nor their prevention or their resolution.

To fight against the bad governance as the cause of the kuluna, Héritier Bahati ¹³ suggests that it would be also worthy that the justice can sanction those who refuse to denounce the criminals and specially to install police stations in the fertile places in the perpetration of the crimes of kuluna. While Jean Pierre Mpiana ¹⁶ speaks about the refoundation of the State so that the latter can fill all its responsibilities.

The bad influences of the environment and the friends were found also as cause of the kuluna, but Jean-Philippe Raynaud ³⁰ brings back that for the most radical authors (as Delbert S. Elliott or Ronald L. Simon), the association with peers "deviants" would inevitably be a part of the trajectory towards the delinquent behavior. For others (as Michael R. Gottfredson), it is the stability in the time of the antisocial behavior and the break that would explain the delinquent behavior to the adolescence. The friends prematurely deviants would incur between them because of their similarities of behavior, but this association would not play a causal role in the development of the later crime. Finally, for certain authors (as Thomas J. Dishion), the friends’ deviants would moderate more that they would favor the link between behavior with early problems and later delinquent and antisocial behavior.

Besides the causes and factors were enumerated above, certain studies quote in particular, the massive drift from the land ⁷, the absence of adequate housing (overpopulation, exiguity of places, crowding…) ^{7, 20}, the not mastered or wild urbanization ^{13, 20}, the alcoholism and the drug addiction ⁷, influences in media ²⁰.

About the massive drift from the land, Jean Pierre Mpiana ¹⁶ proposes the implementation of a policy of rural development susceptible to stop the drift from the land which cross-posts in urban areas the people who have the profile among which is recruited kuluna.

In the absence of adequate housing (overpopulation, exiguity of places, crowding), Héritier Bahati ¹³ suggests the demolition of construction sites and the surveillance of the under construction houses, because without place of fold, refuge, meeting or still concentration, the life and the survival of a band of kuluna become difficult.

For not mastered urbanization or savage, Héritier Bahati ¹³ considers that the fight against the phenomenon kuluna also has to pass by the arrangement of roads through the city, by avoiding the narrow-mindedness. It is necessary to widen them and to fit out them on-line more or less straight.

Certain studies accuse the alcoholism and the drug addiction as the causes of the kuluna, while for Patrick Peretti-Watel ¹⁰, there is inevitably no cause and effect relationship between crime and use of psychoactive substances: they can be two symptoms of the same psychological problems, or two facets of a coherent lifestyle, in particular if this lifestyle includes frequent exits outside any parental control, and thus offer opportunities of use.

Regarding the alcoholism and the drug addiction as the causes of the kuluna, Héritier Bahati ¹³ suggests that:

- The public administration owes take severe police’s measures about the alcoholic drinks such as the increase of a beer bottle’s price, to open the debits of drinks after six o'clock in the evening and to close them at 10 pm, to forbid the accumulation of the commercials and the sale in small quantity of alcoholic drinks and others local made liquors called supu na tolo, lungwila, zododo, aguene;

- The authorities have to proceed to the institution of the agencies of control of the operations of load and unloading of the vehicles which transport foodstuffs coming from the inside of the country to seize with it and destroy any parcel of hemp to be smoked.

In the influence of the media, Jean Pierre Mpiana ¹⁶ approaches the refoundation of the Congolese media so that they really play their role of socialization agencies.

5. Conclusion

The behavior of kuluna underwent enormous changes further to the environmental transformations. If at first, simple grouping in young band of different district or avenues in lack of occupation, the kuluna phenomenon became an open conflict of rivalry interbandages, before falling over to a free violence by which the first motivation is left the theft.

To steal, the kuluna has a whole lot of the other psychological motivations to be quenched. In every raid or punitive descent with a person or with a group of strategic or random people, the kuluna fills its needs for overestimation, for respect of one, for sensation of any power and for power or for authority on others.

Psychologically, the kuluna would thus be in lack of self-respect, and thanks to the consumption of alcohol and/or drug, it succeeds in exceeding its fear, in becoming more audacious, and affects in more "the powerful than him" , "in more evolved, happier, poor, better dressed or considered month than him ".So, the behavior deviants of young inhabitants of Kinshasa get secondary psychological profits, as the consideration, the fear by the others, the self-satisfaction, the invincibility and the omnipotence. And the fundamental question to settle would be the one to know why young people of several districts prefer to resort to the gravest violence to solve their apparently simple problems?

The violent acts put by kuluna are not only dangerous for their victims, but also for kuluna themselves or their close friends and they know it. Why then resort to the behavior of violence while he exists in their immediate and daily environment of the behavioral models which can allow them to satisfy their needs without violence.

The City of Kinshasa abounds in youth movements, in associations of any kind, religious confessions of any edge, but how to explain that all these groupings fail to supervise their young people?

The effect of contagion of the phenomenon kuluna in the various districts and void of Kinshasa is to be looked not only in the similar causes (poverty, unemployment, not supervision of young people…), but especially in the means involved to fight against this socio-educational plague.

Notes

1. BAZULU et BA ANGLAIS, are names given to the gangs of pomba: Young person of the streets of Kinshasa which practises the martial arts likened to a delinquent) or young very strong and allegedly invincible sportsmen whom we find in practically every district.

2. “Sociohistorical approach of urban violence in the city of Kinshasa”

3. “Young Violence in Kinshasa: context and possible prevention”

4. “Young gangsterism in Kinshasa: base and illusions - disappointments bound to the strategies of fight”

5. “Them goes and comes from kuluna between detention centers and the city to the alder of the opinions of the inhabitants of the municipality of Ngaba”

References