The pover­ty and in­creased hard­ships brought on by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic have cre­at­ed a sense of “hope­less­ness” among many youth, which could push young peo­ple in­to a life of crime.

Head of the Crim­i­nol­o­gy De­part­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), Dr Randy Seep­er­sad, told the Sun­day Guardian that this is not in­evitable but that eco­nom­ic hard­ship is among the many fac­tors that dri­ve youth in­to crime. Oth­er fac­tors in­clude poor par­ent­ing and vi­o­lence in the home and com­mu­ni­ty.

Speak­ing about the coun­try’s deep­en­ing so­cio-eco­nom­ic prob­lem, Seep­er­sad said that eco­nom­ic de­pri­va­tion and pover­ty could have a neg­a­tive im­pact on young peo­ple.

“We know that things are get­ting hard­er and hard­er in the coun­try. The COVID pan­dem­ic did not do us any favours in terms of the eco­nom­ic hard­ships. Peo­ple are with­out jobs, jobs are very scarce. They go to uni­ver­si­ty, they do their CAPE, they come out with very good grades and they can­not get a job.

“When that type of hope­less­ness starts to spread to the wider so­ci­ety, it cre­ates a strain. We are see­ing it across the board, I know stu­dents who grad­u­ate with First Class Ho­n­our de­grees and can­not get a job. The lit­er­a­ture will tell you that eco­nom­ic de­pri­va­tion is some­thing that will lead a coun­try in­to the abyss when it comes to crime.”

He said that so­ci­ety needs to do more to as­sist young peo­ple to stay off the streets and away from a life of crime.

“I do un­der­stand the con­straints of Gov­ern­ment and the fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties in run­ning a coun­try, it is not an easy thing to do. But it will trans­late in­to more hard­ships for youths than any­body else.”

Dr Randy Seepersad

‘Not enough youth pro­grammes’

There are not enough youth pro­grammes, he con­tend­ed.

“When you speak to stake­hold­ers like Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty and oth­er NGOs, one thing they con­sis­tent­ly say is that they are strug­gling and the Gov­ern­ment gave them a lit­tle some­thing here and there, but they are strug­gling to do the good work they do.”

He al­so said that T&T de­pends on for­eign aid agen­cies like the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) and US­AID from the US Gov­ern­ment to fund cer­tain pro­grammes, “and they come in­to the re­gion and they are do­ing what the gov­ern­ments of the re­gion should be do­ing but they do not.”

At present, he added, “US­AID has put out a call for pro­pos­als and they are of­fer­ing US$25 mil­lion to de­vel­op in­ter­ven­tions tar­get­ing youth in the Caribbean. They did one in three Caribbean coun­tries but T&T was not one of them. It is said that the US Gov­ern­ment is foot­ing the bill when Caribbean Gov­ern­ments should be do­ing this.”

Seep­er­sad said we need to re-pri­ori­tise and find the re­sources be­cause we are head­ing down a road where things are get­ting worse. “What we have been do­ing has not been work­ing,” he added.

He said UWI has been play­ing its part as a stake­hold­er. Last week Fri­day, Seep­er­sad said, he had a meet­ing with the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons where they dis­cussed the im­por­tance of train­ing the staff in restora­tive jus­tice.

“We are in the process of or­gan­is­ing that at no cost to the T&T Prison Ser­vice. I have a train­ing ses­sion with Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty (last week). The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty is do­ing a na­tion­al crime vic­tim­i­sa­tion and opin­ion sur­vey. They are col­lect­ing da­ta across the coun­try and we at UWI are help­ing them with that.”

Teens and crime

Ac­cord­ing to the sta­tis­tics that Seep­er­sad pro­vid­ed, the to­tal num­ber of se­ri­ous crimes com­mit­ted by the youth un­der age 17 was 297 in 2015 com­pared to 153 in 2020.

He ex­plained the re­duc­tion in teenage crimes.

“The ap­proach to deal­ing with youth in­frac­tions of the law be­came more restora­tive dur­ing this pe­ri­od, as op­posed to puni­tive. More ser­vices to as­sist youth were put in place, cul­mi­nat­ing in the in­sti­tut­ing of two chil­dren courts in T&T.”

He said this trans­for­ma­tion of the youth jus­tice sys­tem took place from 2014 to 2018. “This was the Ju­ve­nile Court Project which was led by the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP) and fund­ed by US­AID.” This trans­for­ma­tion in the ap­proach to deal­ing with the youth, he said, “co­in­cides with the de­cline in youth of­fend­ing and most like­ly had an im­por­tant im­pact on that de­cline.”

Seep­e­sad said crime among teenagers tends to be low­er than crime among peo­ple in their 20s.

“If you look at the sta­tis­tics which de­fine young per­sons un­der 18 years of age, mean­ing not adults, then the sta­tis­tics will show that they are re­spon­si­ble on­ly for a mi­nor pro­por­tion of vi­o­lent of­fences. The fig­ures show around 1.5 per cent.

“A youth might com­mit a vi­o­lent of­fence and it’s all over the news, and with­out ref­er­ence to any sta­tis­tics peo­ple start to talk about the rise in youth crime. They cre­ate a nar­ra­tive which un­for­tu­nate­ly cre­ates pub­lic opin­ion and which leads the politi­cians to cre­ate puni­tive types of ap­proach­es in deal­ing with youths.”

He said if the pub­lic us­es the de­f­i­n­i­tion of a “youth” as some­one un­der 29 years of age but over age 20 then their en­gage­ment in crime ris­es.

“The fac­tors that dri­ve those types of use would be dif­fer­ent from youths in school. It is not so much about age but it is more about the con­text and the lo­ca­tion, the place and sit­u­a­tion. The crim­i­no­log­i­cal lit­er­a­ture would show that there are many fac­tors that could lead to crim­i­nal­i­ty which are poor par­ent­ing, vi­o­lence in the home and vi­o­lence in the com­mu­ni­ty. There could be eco­nom­ic de­pri­va­tion and pover­ty which leads to crime.”

He said in dif­fer­ent parts of T&T there could be dif­fer­ent rea­sons why the youth com­mit crimes.

“In one com­mu­ni­ty there may be gangs, the rea­sons in those com­mu­ni­ties may be very dif­fer­ent from some up­scale neigh­bour­hood where youths may be in­volved in oth­er ac­tiv­i­ty. Be­hind closed doors, these well off youths may be us­ing co­caine or they may be in­volved in white-col­lar of­fences. How­ev­er, in a com­mu­ni­ty with gangs, it would be dif­fer­ent things like weapons and street crimes.”

'Project Build­ing BLOCKS bring­ing peace among ma­jor gangs in east Port-of-Spain'

Project Build­ing BLOCKS, a pro­gramme launched in 2020, has been suc­cess­ful in bring­ing peace among ma­jor gangs in the east Port-of-Spain area. Pro­gramme Man­ag­er Gary Grant told the Sun­day Guardian that since the pro­gramme start­ed, they have been work­ing in the hot spots and have seen a re­duc­tion of shoot­ings in the area.

He said Project Build­ing BLOCKS was an ini­tia­tive of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. The cur­rent pro­gramme is a suc­ces­sor to the Cit­i­zens Se­cu­ri­ty Pro­gramme which helped youths in the area.

"Based on the suc­cess of the re­duc­tion of shoot­ings in east Port-of-Spain area, the Gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed that they would con­tin­ue with Project Build­ing BLOCKS un­der the Cure Vi­o­lence mod­el. Our man­date is to re­duce gang and gun-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence in the east Port-of-Spain area.

"We work in the hot spot ar­eas in the east Port-of-Spain com­mu­ni­ty. The pro­gramme comes from a health-mod­el ap­proach. Un­der the mod­el, it is be­lieved that crime is like a dis­ease and be­cause it is a dis­ease it could be treat­ed like COVID-19, Tu­ber­cu­lo­sis or HIV. This mod­el seeks to de­tect, in­ter­rupt the trans­mis­sion and change com­mu­ni­ty norms."

Ex­plain­ing the work they do in high-risk com­mu­ni­ties, he said they have "vi­o­lence in­ter­rupters" who are peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty with "in­flu­ence". If a shoot­ing oc­curs and they get wind of it, they would in­ter­vene to try to pre­vent it and they would go to the dif­fer­ent par­ties and try to me­di­ate.

Even af­ter a shoot­ing or acts of vi­o­lence, the vi­o­lent in­ter­rupters would coun­sel all those who were in­volved to bring peace.

He added that Project Build­ing BLOCKS al­so has out­reach work­ers sim­i­lar to so­cial work­ers who work with high-risk in­di­vid­u­als "to try bring them from high risk to low risk by send­ing them on job train­ing pro­grammes, send­ing them back to school, help­ing them get jobs."

There is al­so a "shoot­ing re­sponse" pro­gramme where if some­one is killed they would go in­to the com­mu­ni­ty and teach res­i­dents how to solve prob­lems with­out vi­o­lence.

He spoke about some of the pro­gramme’s ac­com­plish­ments since its for­ma­tion in 2020.

"We were in­stru­men­tal in hav­ing a peace ini­tia­tive be­tween war­ring gangs in east Port-of-Spain. We helped them to come to­geth­er and this was be­tween Ras­ta City and the Mus­lims. Present­ly, there is a cease-fire tak­ing place in a com­mu­ni­ty whose name I will not call. There’s a new gang that came on the scene and tried to take con­trol and cause some prob­lems. We spoke to the in­di­vid­u­als and we brought a cease­fire. Peo­ple would re­alise in that area things are cool com­pared to in the past. That’s be­cause of the work that we’ve been do­ing on the ground."

He said that they work close­ly with the Hearts and Minds unit of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice which has a lot of cred­i­bil­i­ty in the Port-of-Spain area and the gang lead­ers have no prob­lems work­ing with them.

"They take youths to dif­fer­ent ac­tiv­i­ties out of the com­mu­ni­ty like Christ­mas treats. Peo­ple talk about how many shoot­ings take place but they don’t talk about how many mur­ders and shoot­ings we have pre­vent­ed with our work. Al­though I don’t have the sta­tis­tics with me, we have been see­ing a de­cline in some types of crime in east Port-of-Spain."

Ac­cord­ing to Grant, it is un­for­tu­nate that crime is "glam­or­ised" in some com­mu­ni­ties as this en­cour­ages young peo­ple to want to get in­to that neg­a­tive lifestyle.

"A per­son liv­ing a life of crime is like a hero in some of these com­mu­ni­ties be­cause they are like the Robin Hoods, the com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers host­ing dif­fer­ent types of ac­tiv­i­ties. They buy books for school­child­ren. They get con­tracts. Youths see the ‘re­spect’ they have and they want to im­i­tate that, the nice cars and big hous­es these in­di­vid­u­als have."

Grant al­so said that the vast ma­jor­i­ty of youths are not in­volved in crime but are hard-work­ing and want to lead a pro­duc­tive life.

"It’s just a small mi­nor­i­ty who com­mit a crime. Be­cause of what they do that is what is shown and the com­mu­ni­ty is stig­ma­tised."