Teasing out the Tangle: Raskols, Young Men, Crime and HIV

This chapter revolves around the ‘raskol’, a term first used in the mid1960s to describe young men, usually in groups, who engaged in petty theft and vandalism around Port Moresby, but later became associated with more serious property crime, violence and rape (Harris 1988, 3–16). Deriving from the English word ‘rascal’, raskolism referred to a new development in the growing town life of what was then the administrative centre of the Australian territories of Papua and New Guinea. Though raskolism still preserves certain connotations of urbanisation and opportunism, so-called raskols are now found in many rural areas while the nature and complexity of criminal activity, including raskolism, has evolved.