A frightening situation

Dec 02, 2010 Editorial

There seems no end to the comments about the age of today’s dangerous criminals. And indeed these comments are warranted because the dangerous criminals seem to be getting younger. In living memory there have been young criminals, particularly those who operated during the crime wave. Some were as young as 14.
Given the ages of these young people it is clear that their parents either lost control or they were non-existent. Indeed, many of these young men were the products of single parent households headed by their mothers. And it has been established that for some reason, many mothers give up trying to control their pubescent sons.
We have also noted that the majority are illiterate and it is here that the problem lies. With the absence of literacy comes the inability to reason. And it is this inability that causes the young people to gravitate to what they perceive as easy pickings or to be easily influenced by the more savvy in society.
When the police eventually prevailed against the young gunmen in Buxton the society believed that the crisis had passed, that other young people would have taken heed. But then again most of these boys would have only learnt if they had the ability to learn.
Last week, one analyst examined this phenomenon of young criminals and concluded that there are not enough social avenues for the growing population. He also contended that the community is most uncaring when it comes to the development of the young in its ranks. Gone are the days when the community accepted responsibility for every young child.
A lot has changed from the days when even life was simpler, when movies were less violent and when the role models were clean-cut and worked honestly for their living. Today the role model is the person with the most jewellery and money. These are the drug dealers and the people who have easy access to money.
That being the case, these poorly educated young men would easily gravitate to a life of crime. We have heard repeatedly people, after the young man is caught, saying that the child followed bad company, or that he had his own way and that nobody could talk to him.
Some parents would say that they tried their best but to no avail. The truth is that both the school and the community are failing to support the household. A few years ago the police arrested some young men on a charge of stealing a large gold band. The outcome of that story is still pending.
And two days the police at Ruimveldt arrested two schoolboys in their school uniform for stealing someone’s bicycle and selling it. These boys certainly failed to appreciate right from wrong and the fact that one simple conviction could ruin the rest of their lives.
For them, this is just a bump in the road because they seemed quite relaxed in custody when others their age would have been crying their heart out.
Many are lamenting the absence of an expansive Guyana National Service which did take care of the kinds of children who are now criminals. The hue and cry about the organization taking people’s children away from them was farfetched but because the government wanted to be popular it scrapped the organization on the grounds that the various centres were too costly to man.
We now know that it is much more costly not to have the national service. Large sums have to be spent on arming and rearming the law enforcement agencies and even more to prosecute them and if they are found guilty, to maintain them as guests of the state.
There are those who may say that the situation is grossly exaggerated but if one were to look back over the past month one would find that almost all of those killed or arrested following the commission of serious crimes were younger than 20.
We do not believe that the die is cast but unless something is done that would be the case.