Authors : Ramalinggam Rajamanickam, Tengku Noor Azira Tengku Zainudin, Zainunnisa Abdul Rahman and Ahmad Azam Mohd. Shariff
Abstract: Educational institutions are the place where knowledge and positive values are nurtured. The graduates of such institutions are expected to portray the level of maturity that they are supposed to have learnt from the educational institutions. However, in reality the student’s behaviour in the current educational institutions does not reflect the maturity and positive values that are expected from them. Reports on the increase of ‘ragging’ incidences in educational institutions served to expose the barbaric acts of the students. Therefore, the question is whether the Malaysian Criminal Law is adequate enough to curb this undesirable actions. In order to answer this question, the legal provisions under the Malaysian penal code will be looked into so as to identify the provisions in the code that are relevant to ‘ragging’. The relevant provisions will then be scrutinized to determine whether they are adequate to prohibit the act of ‘ragging’. In order to achieve these objectives, this study employs a qualitative approach. The study found that the Malaysian criminal law has provisions that are applicable to the physical forms of ‘ragging’. However, the law lacked the necessary provisions that can govern the other forms of ‘ragging’ such as psychological forms of ‘ragging. ‘Thus, this study suggests that an amendment to the existing criminal law or the enactment of a specific law on ‘ragging’ is vital to curb this issue.
Ramalinggam Rajamanickam, Tengku Noor Azira Tengku Zainudin, Zainunnisa Abdul Rahman and Ahmad Azam Mohd. Shariff, 2017. Prohibiting ‘Ragging’ in the Malaysian Educational Institutions: Is the Law Adequate?. The Social Sciences, 12: 1440-1443.