San Fer­nan­do West Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Faris Al-Rawi has re­vealed that 322 chil­dren had to be tak­en be­fore the Chil­dren’s Court in the last two years.

Al-Rawi, the for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, was con­tribut­ing to a mo­tion brought by the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ti­tled Fail­ure to Pre­vent Surge in Crim­i­nal Ac­tiv­i­ty in par­lia­ment yes­ter­day when he gave the sta­tis­tic.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion, he spoke of the es­tab­lish­ment of sev­er­al spe­cial­ist courts, among them the Chil­dren’s Court. He then quot­ed sta­tis­tics from the Pub­lic De­fend­ers Re­port as it re­lates to chil­dren.

“Dis­or­der­ly be­hav­iour, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, drug of­fences, es­cap­ing law­ful cus­tody, il­le­gal en­try, kid­nap­ping, lar­ce­ny, loi­ter­ing, un­law­ful ma­li­cious dam­age, manslaugh­ter, mur­der, pos­ses­sion of firearms; am­mu­ni­tion weapons, rob­bery, sex­u­al of­fences, shoot­ing with in­tent to kill, threats, dri­ving of­fences, vi­o­lent ob­scene lan­guage, that is not in a place out­side the Chil­dren’s Court you know Madam Speak­er, those are the mat­ters be­ing dealt with in the Chil­dren’s Court,” he said.

Al-Rawi said all of these crimes were al­leged­ly com­mit­ted dur­ing the pe­ri­od of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“For 2020, 215 chil­dren found them­selves in that sce­nario, for 2021 in the same ty­polo­gies 107, that is 322 chil­dren in con­flict with the law Madam Speak­er,” he added.

But even amid those trou­bling sta­tis­tics came a warn­ing from Tabaquite Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Ani­ta Haynes that more crimes in­volv­ing chil­dren could be on the hori­zon.

Haynes point­ed to the fact that there is not enough da­ta col­lect­ed on how many chil­dren have dropped out of school be­cause they were un­able to ac­cess on­line learn­ing dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

“We are un­able to ac­cess how many stu­dents may have logged on once or twice and nev­er logged on and, there­fore, their com­ple­tion rates are ques­tion­able, we are un­able to know the ab­solute mag­ni­tude that we face in the post-pan­dem­ic re­al­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and there­fore, know­ing that stu­dents who have dropped out of school are five times more like­ly than high school grad­u­ates to be ar­rest­ed in their life­time, we can’t say what tsuna­mi may be about to hit us in about five years,” she said.

Nev­er­the­less, Haynes told the Gov­ern­ment that “crim­i­nal­is­ing chil­dren cre­ates a prob­lem and we have to recog­nise that as we think about the fu­ture.”

In­stead, she im­plored them to use prop­er da­ta to come up with work­able so­lu­tions.

Haynes al­so said as a na­tion, a great dis­ser­vice had been done to chil­dren be­cause not even enough em­pha­sis was placed on their men­tal health dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

“I could not imag­ine what it would have been like to be 15, 14 and lock­down, away, no so­cial­i­sa­tion and then com­ing back in­to it.”

In re­sponse to Haynes, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said her min­istry was do­ing a lot to curb school vi­o­lence and boast­ed about head­way be­ing made.

“The in­tro­duc­tion of those com­mu­ni­ty po­lice in our schools has made a tan­gi­ble dif­fer­ence in the be­hav­iour of the stu­dents,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

But Gads­by-Dol­ly al­so in­sist­ed that chil­dren who do wrong will be dealt with ac­cord­ing to the school reg­u­la­tions.

“Let me be clear, there is a na­tion­al school code of con­duct and the Ed­u­ca­tion Act pro­vides for, in cir­cum­stances where the crime is heinous, ex­pul­sion of stu­dents and the Min­istry (of Ed­u­ca­tion) will take ac­tion where re­quired to deal with heinous crime,” she said.

She said that it has noth­ing to do with crim­i­nal­is­ing stu­dents but with main­tain­ing law and or­der.

How­ev­er, Gads­by-Dol­ly said there is con­stant con­sul­ta­tion with all ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers to treat chal­lenges and the min­istry is al­ways look­ing for new ways to en­cour­age pos­i­tive be­hav­iour among chil­dren.

Just over two weeks ago, a 15-year-old fe­male stu­dent of the Williamsville Sec­ondary School, who is fac­ing crim­i­nal charges for stab­bing her fe­male school­mate with a knife, was ex­pelled from school.