Youth involvement in crime

Oct 16, 2014 Editorial

Youth involvement in crime has reached unprecedented proportions. In fact, just about every country in the English-speaking Caribbean seems to be grappling with this problem. Of course, young people have always been credited with impetuosity and hostility for the greater part.
Many young people try to grab attention as they seek to make a name for themselves. The search for identity is crucial for young people; it leads them to form groups and stage so-called initiations. Sometimes the initiation can be horrendous—go kill a man or burn a house. The need to belong can override the sense of righteousness instilled in everyone; such is the power of peer pressure. Having established oneself there is now the perception that the individual hopes to create.
In every society young people seek role models, but these days the role models are mostly of the violent types. They are the rich and powerful. The money is made from nefarious activities and the fame is often created by anti-social measures. So it is that drug dealers with their armies are often the role models and the more gruesome their operations the more sought after is the image.
Unfortunately, in the wider world the role models are the high profile stage performers, prominent sportsmen, and of course the drug dealer who flaunts large and impressive bits of jewellery which in modern parlance is called bling.
In Guyana, the incidence of poverty and the absence of an adequate number of male teachers have led to many boys leaving school before they are actually ready to enter the world of work. The result is that they have no jobs and they need money to live like their role models, the big spenders. The result is that they steal.
In Guyana we have on many occasions commented on the open borders and about the things that can cross these borders. That there seems to be a proliferation of guns; just about every young man who commits a crime does so with a gun. While it is not unheard of, teenagers are being shot and killed while attempting to commit robberies. At their ages, most boys were doing childish things.
We have been exposed over the past few years to the range of teenage and other youth criminals. Several months ago two teenagers were nabbed while transporting an M-16 rifle, grenades and some sixty rounds of ammunition. They are now behind bars. Then there were the young men who made life for taxi drivers a nightmare. So far, there is no evidence to suggest that the men who kidnapped and killed some hire car drivers before taking their cars were older than eighteen.
During the crime wave that spread from 2002 to 2006, and even in the years after, the nation got used to teenage gunmen. Survivors of the Lusignan Massacre spoke of children carrying high-powered rifles and using them with deadly effect.
Many of the out-of-school teenage boys have become drug couriers because the pay is good and the work is nothing compared to the manual labour of the skilled personnel. And each year an increasing number of young uneducated men join the ranks of the criminals.
The Caribbean governments are devising plans to curb this trend of the young men rushing to swell the ranks of the criminal world. They are considering measures that are rooted in job creation. Guyana for its part piloted a programme called ‘Hope For All’, an initiative involving skills training and computer learning. It is believed that once armed with a skill the youth would pursue honest labour. But this would only be a reality if the young men and young girls are also targeted by other social organizations. This is where the Ministries of Education, Home Affairs and Culture, Youth and Sport can make their presence felt. Yet this may only be wishful thinking, because the nation is experiencing an unremitting wave of crime.

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