Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt 

In the last nine months, 120 chil­dren have been ar­rest­ed and charged with crimes ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the po­lice Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (CA­PA).

For the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od—be­tween Jan­u­ary 1 and Sep­tem­ber 30, 2021—143 chil­dren were ar­rest­ed and charged. In 2022, that num­ber in­creased to 181 chil­dren.

By 2023, the num­ber of chil­dren charged in­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly to 239 chil­dren.

 In com­par­i­son to last year, this year’s fig­ure has dropped to al­most half that amount, to 120, as of Sep­tem­ber 30. The fig­ures re­fer to mat­ters de­tect­ed by the po­lice.

In terms of gen­der, in 2021, nine girls were charged with crimes; how­ev­er, this fig­ure rose to 11 the fol­low­ing year and even­tu­al­ly peaked at 16 in 2023 be­fore drop­ping back to 11 for 2024 as of Sep­tem­ber 30.

As of Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, 34 chil­dren were charged for pos­ses­sion of arms and am­mu­ni­tion, while 68 were charged in 2023, 51 were charged in 2022, and 37 were charged in 2021.

Rob­beries were the sec­ond high­est crime com­mit­ted by chil­dren over the years, fol­lowed by break­ing and en­ter­ing and wound­ing/shoot­ings.

 Po­lice have at­trib­uted the drop in the num­ber of chil­dren charged for this year so far to more proac­tive com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing ini­tia­tives with schools and par­ents be­ing tar­get­ed and en­cour­aged to quell in­dis­ci­pline.

One of­fi­cer said more par­ents have shown greater in­ter­est in pre­ven­ta­tive pro­grammes like the Po­lice Youth Clubs (PYC).

But the of­fi­cer added, “The fig­ures pro­vid­ed sim­ply re­port what has al­ready been de­tect­ed or charged. It’s prob­a­ble that crimes in­volv­ing chil­dren are sim­ply not be­ing de­tect­ed as high as pre­vi­ous years, so there’s no one sin­gle an­swer.”

De­spite the im­proved fig­ures so far for 2024, the con­cern about child crim­i­nals still re­mains high among po­lice and par­ents.

Young chil­dren be­ing used as look­outs and ‘gun sacks’ by gangs

Dur­ing a Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty me­dia brief­ing in Sep­tem­ber, the for­mer head of the North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, now ACP Richard Smith, re­port­ed that two boys as young as eight years old were present with an­oth­er old­er boy to ex­tort mon­ey from a Tu­na­puna busi­ness­man.

 Smith stressed the im­por­tant roles par­ents played in pro­tect­ing their chil­dren from crim­i­nal­i­ty as he urged them to be more proac­tive in their chil­dren’s lives.

 “Re­mem­ber, you must know where your chil­dren are, you know. We are go­ing to take some of the par­ents to task be­cause young chil­dren are com­mit­ting crimes.”

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia in Sep­tem­ber, ACP Smith said in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the ex­tor­tion at­tempt again by the busi­ness­man by the boys were still on­go­ing.

Po­lice told Guardian Me­dia that while there have been no re­ports of chil­dren as young as eight years old be­ing ar­rest­ed, their old­er peers have been de­tained by po­lice for act­ing as look­outs or “mes­sage mak­ers” for gangs.

One of­fi­cer in the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF) said that crim­i­nal gangs in East Port-of-Spain have been us­ing chil­dren as young as 13 years old to alert near­by gang­sters of ap­proach­ing pa­trols.

“Every time we pa­trol ar­eas like St Paul Street and they see a po­lice ve­hi­cle pass or com­ing close, you’ll hear them say­ing, ‘Right there, they com­ing up the back.’ These are chil­dren say­ing this all the time.

“This hap­pens in places like Leau Place, Lovell Place, and Clifton Hill, any­where there.”

The of­fi­cer said that chil­dren in their ear­ly teens have al­so been re­cruit­ed as “gun sacks,” or some­one des­ig­nat­ed to quick­ly hide weapons from po­lice dur­ing a raid or search.

Smith said crim­i­nals may choose to use ado­les­cents as they are less like­ly to arouse sus­pi­cion from po­lice.

He not­ed that even if of­fi­cers ar­rest­ed a child, it ini­ti­at­ed a se­ries of ad­di­tion­al ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­ce­dures to process a mi­nor, not­ing that on­ly the Mara­cas, St Joseph and Oropouche po­lice sta­tions were ca­pa­ble of hous­ing chil­dren.

YTRC’s oc­cu­pa­tion ris­es be­tween 2022 and 2023

The Youth Trans­for­ma­tion and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (YTRC), Arou­ca, is the main in­sti­tu­tion charged with the cus­tody of chil­dren charged with se­ri­ous crimes.

The fa­cil­i­ty is joint­ly man­aged by the prison ser­vice and the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via What­sApp on Wednes­day, a prison ser­vice spokesper­son re­port­ed that as of Oc­to­ber 2, there were 37 boys and two girls housed at the YTRC’s fa­cil­i­ty. 

The num­ber of peo­ple de­tained at the fa­cil­i­ty in 2022 was 47 (43 boys and four girls). This in­creased in 2023 to 58 (53 boys and five girls).

In their re­sponse, the prison ser­vice not­ed that all youth of­fend­ers un­der­went re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grammes, in­clud­ing aca­d­e­m­ic train­ing, vo­ca­tion­al skills and moral, cul­tur­al, sport­ing and spir­i­tu­al pro­grammes.

“Up­on com­mit­tal, they are as­sessed to de­ter­mine their crim­ino­genic needs. The res­i­dents are re­quired to at­tend school and are placed ac­cord­ing­ly based on lit­er­a­cy.

The struc­tured ap­proach en­sures that they re­ceive a com­pre­hen­sive ed­u­ca­tion that pre­pares them for fur­ther aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions.”

In ad­di­tion to their own pro­grammes, the prison ser­vice re­port­ed that sev­er­al non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGOs) have al­so of­fered per­son­al de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes.

 In their re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia, the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty said they worked close­ly with the Chil­dren’s Court to cre­ate in­ter­ven­tion plans for chil­dren who are be­fore the court.

 The au­thor­i­ty not­ed that their Child Jus­tice Unit has sev­er­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, among which are mon­i­tor­ing the well-be­ing of chil­dren at the YTRC.

‘Par­ents, teach­ers, and oth­er stake­hold­ers must play a proac­tive role’

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, pro­fes­sion­al me­di­a­tor Jene­ice De Coteau said ef­fec­tive­ly quelling child crim­i­nals was not just the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the po­lice, as par­ents, teach­ers, and oth­er stake­hold­ers must play a more proac­tive role in recog­nis­ing an­ti-so­cial ten­den­cies.

 De Coteau, who has worked with the St Joseph Po­lice Youth Club and made school vis­its to pro­vide train­ing on con­flict res­o­lu­tion and anger man­age­ment, said she has seen first­hand that chil­dren in­volved in crime are get­ting younger.

 She not­ed that the cul­mi­na­tion of dif­fer­ent trau­mas and un­re­solved is­sues can have an ad­verse ef­fect on chil­dren who have not been prop­er­ly so­cialised to cope with these prob­lems.

 “We would have been in­ter­act­ing with sec­ondary school stu­dents and now even pri­ma­ry school stu­dents are in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties of dif­fer­ent kinds and so on. Grief is a fac­tor in putting a child at risk, and the way that young peo­ple are taught or not taught how to cope with dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions like anger, hurt, loss, or fear—all these things go through their mind be­cause they have not re­al­ly been taught.

 “Our so­ci­ety has not been struc­tured in a way where we teach our young peo­ple or even adults how to man­age sit­u­a­tions cor­rect­ly,” she said.

 Dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in March 2021, Eye on De­pen­den­cy di­rec­tor Garth St Clair re­port­ed that chil­dren in both pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools were at risk of be­ing re­cruit­ed by crim­i­nals.

 He not­ed that chil­dren from sin­gle-par­ent house­holds were par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to crim­i­nal in­flu­ence due to the fi­nan­cial strain on their homes.

 “Some of them can­not af­ford a lot of the things they see their friends have. On the block, the so-called com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers seek out these vul­ner­a­ble folks, and $1,000 looks re­al­ly at­trac­tive to some­one who just spent their last $50 to buy some milk. So all they ask is to take some drugs to school and sell or just sit high­er up the road and take this ra­dio and tell us what you see or keep this (gun) for us,” he said.

 Last April, dur­ing a re­gion­al crime sym­po­sium at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher re­port­ed that in 2022, 54.6 per cent of the per­pe­tra­tors were peo­ple aged 15 to 29.

Mi­LAT, MY­PART As­set for delin­quent stu­dents

Last No­vem­ber, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly an­nounced that un­ruly stu­dents would be en­rolled in­to the Mil­i­tary Led Aca­d­e­m­ic Train­ing (Mi­LAT) pro­gramme rather than be­ing left idle.

 Dr Gads­by-Dol­ly stressed that school in­dis­ci­pline was a ma­jor con­cern to her min­istry.

 Re­fer­ring to in­for­ma­tion gath­ered by min­istry of­fi­cials, she added that an­ti-so­cial be­hav­iours were most preva­lent when they were in Form Three (15 or 16 years old).

 “That has an im­pact on school dropouts be­cause they reach a com­pul­so­ry age and they make the de­ci­sion to leave, and the state can­not force them to stay in (school).”

 Gads­by-Dol­ly added that the mech­a­nism to en­rol a stu­dent in­to the Mi­LAT pro­gramme for un­ruly be­hav­iour would on­ly be ini­ti­at­ed if the school’s sup­port sys­tems failed to bring about the nec­es­sary changes in the child.

 The Mi­LAT pro­gramme is a so­cial in­ter­ven­tion ini­tia­tive un­der the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice that is specif­i­cal­ly de­signed to help “at-risk” young men be­tween the ages of 16 and 20 years de­vel­op more pro­duc­tive be­hav­iours and at­ti­tudes. It is co­or­di­nat­ed and run by mil­i­tary of­fi­cers.

 The Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice, which is led by Fos­ter Cum­mings, was cre­at­ed in 2020 fol­low­ing the PNM’s vic­to­ry in the gen­er­al elec­tion that year.

 The min­istry has ini­ti­at­ed sev­er­al vo­ca­tion­al and aca­d­e­m­ic pro­grammes through part­ner­ships with oth­er in­sti­tu­tions.

A new ini­tia­tive, MY­PART As­set, Cum­mings said, will of­fer safe space for ex­pelled stu­dents. It will be man­aged by the Spe­cialised Youth Ser­vice Pro­grammes out of the re­serves of the De­fence Force. The stu­dents, he said, “will go through a pe­ri­od of as­sess­ment of three months, and then we di­rect them in­to ei­ther the tech­ni­cal-vo­ca­tion­al as­pect, which is the MY­PART, or the aca­d­e­m­ic stream, which is the Mil­i­tary-led Aca­d­e­m­ic Train­ing (Mi­LAT).

“What we are hop­ing to do in­stead of them just be­ing ex­pelled from school and falling by the way­side is that we present an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty in a more dis­ci­plined en­vi­ron­ment where these chil­dren can have an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty to­wards their ed­u­ca­tion and their de­vel­op­ment.”

There will al­so be a fe­male ver­sion of the Mi­LAT pro­gramme, Cum­mings said, as in its cur­rent state, it is on­ly open to young men.

 What the law says

 Un­der Sec­tion 57 (I) of the Chil­dren’s Act 46:01, it is not­ed that when a child is con­vict­ed of a crime and the court holds that a “par­ent, guardian, or per­son with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the child has failed to ex­er­cise rea­son­able care of or su­per­vi­sion to pre­vent the com­mis­sion of an of­fence, the court may call up­on the par­ent or guardian to show why he should not pay a fine.”

 Un­der Part III, Sec­tion 8 of the Chil­dren’s Act, any­one who “gives, sells, lends, or rents a firearm to a child” is li­able on con­vic­tion to a fine of $50,000 and im­pris­on­ment for ten years.

Un­der the Sum­ma­ry Courts Act, Chap­ter 4:20, the age of crim­i­nal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in T&T is sev­en years old.

A child is con­sid­ered ‘doli in­ca­pax’ or in­ca­pable of form­ing the in­tent to com­mit a crime if they are be­low the age of sev­en.