JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad says de­spite the num­ber of cas­es be­fore the Chil­dren’s Court and the 1,050 chil­dren sus­pend­ed from schools in the first three months of the aca­d­e­m­ic year, the use of State of Emer­gency pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion or­ders for mi­nors may not be the best so­lu­tion to steer­ing youth away from de­viant and crim­i­nal be­hav­iour.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Seep­er­sad said if child vi­o­lence is re­port­ed­ly high, there should be few­er PDOs and au­thor­i­ties should work more on re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing those who are go­ing down the wrong path.

“Our youth jus­tice sys­tem has trans­formed it­self from one that in the past was ex­treme­ly ret­ribu­tive, was ex­treme­ly pun­ish­ment ori­en­tat­ed, to one that is now very, very restora­tive. So, you know, when you look at the op­er­a­tion of the Chil­dren’s Court, notwith­stand­ing, of course, that sev­er­al thou­sand cas­es have gone through the chil­dren’s courts since the in­cep­tion, when you look at the ap­proach that the chil­dren’s courts take, it’s re­al­ly, re­al­ly far more about re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion than about pun­ish­ing.”

He added: “So you’re try­ing, yes, to get youths to recog­nise that they’ve done some­thing wrong, but at the same time try­ing to find out what is hap­pen­ing in the lives of the youths, and most im­por­tant­ly, to pro­vide in­ter­ven­tion.

“So go­ing back to the root of PDOs, then you’re shift­ing back­wards. You know, you’re go­ing back to­wards a puni­tive ap­proach, which, you know, a lot of re­search sug­gests it’s re­al­ly not the way to go at all when it comes to young per­sons. I’m ab­solute­ly not sug­gest­ing that we go the route of more PDOs, but we re­al­ly, as far as pos­si­ble, try to in­ter­vene and find out what is go­ing wrong.”

In a gazetted de­ten­tion or­der on Tues­day, po­lice iden­ti­fied a teenag­er as a mem­ber of an or­gan­ised gang op­er­at­ing in Guapo, La Brea and Point Fortin. He was the sec­ond teen or­dered de­tained at the Youth Train­ing and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre since the SoE came in­to ef­fect on March 3.

And with over 1,000 sus­pen­sions for the first three months of the school year, Seep­er­sad said if done cor­rect­ly, sus­pen­sions can be used to curb de­viant be­hav­iour.

“There is re­search that shows that de­pend­ing on how you han­dle sus­pen­sion, you could ac­tu­al­ly have some very pos­i­tive out­comes. You can struc­ture the ex­pe­ri­ence in such a way that you use the time un­der sus­pen­sion to pro­vide some kind of in­ter­ven­tion.”

Speak­ing in the Sen­ate on Tues­day, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath said the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry does not treat sus­pen­sion as ar­bi­trary pun­ish­ment. He added that sus­pen­sion is used where be­hav­iour threat­ens the safe­ty, or­der and prop­er func­tion­ing of the school en­vi­ron­ment, but it is gov­erned by clear pro­ce­dures, due process and pro­por­tion­al­i­ty.

Seep­er­sad said in­ter­ven­tion in school sus­pen­sion de­pends on the spe­cif­ic na­ture of the is­sue with the child.

“At least in some places, guid­ance coun­sel­lors and the psy­chol­o­gists in­ter­vene to try to get at the root of the prob­lem with the child and to try to pro­vide that lev­el of in­ter­ven­tion, even go­ing as far as ap­proach­ing the fam­i­ly, coun­selling the child, coun­selling the fam­i­ly, try­ing to fig­ure out what is go­ing wrong that may lead to be­hav­iour which is at the lev­el that would war­rant school sus­pen­sion. So, school sus­pen­sion is some­thing that could be tak­en as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­ter­vene. And if in­ter­ven­tion is done right, you can help to re­me­di­ate a par­tic­u­lar prob­lem.”