But there is some hope for change. Twenty minutes' drive from Moresby, City Mission's New Life farm has offered an alternative to the violence for between 5,000 and 6,000 street children since it opened 11 years ago.
The regime is strict: smoking and drinking are forbidden and there is a strong religious flavor to the instruction.
But the founder, Larry George, says the structure and respect of their new lives can work wonders.
"Most of them aren't bad kids," says George. "It's mainly just poverty that's driving the crime. People can read in the papers about the government stealing millions of kina and get really frustrated."
Many of the children, he says, end up as security guards, exchanging fire with the raskols who were once their peers.
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