Jan­nelle Bernard

Se­nior Re­porter

jan­nelle.bernard@cnc3.co.tt

One child de­vel­op­ment psy­chol­o­gist says us­ing leg­is­la­tion to hold par­ents ac­count­able for the crim­i­nal ac­tions of their chil­dren may be viewed by some as a step in the right di­rec­tion. How­ev­er, child ado­les­cent de­vel­op­men­tal psy­chol­o­gist Camile Swapp notes that this fails to ad­dress oth­er ma­jor con­tribut­ing fac­tors to crime, such as gun ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and fam­i­ly dy­nam­ics.

“We have to know more be­fore we say we will just go af­ter one group, our cul­ture, our so­ci­ety, we have to go back to his­to­ry and we have to see what is hap­pen­ing now. How are we so­cial­is­ing our peo­ple be­fore they even be­came par­ents?” she said on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day.

“Some of the par­ents that we are talk­ing about are neg­li­gent, some par­ents have can­cer, some par­ents are men­tal­ly un­well.”

Swapp be­lieves some peo­ple do not know how to be par­ents and should be giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn.

She said, “What are the sup­port sys­tems we have in Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries for par­ents?
“We talk a lot about what we are go­ing to do, but we don’t talk about sup­port, par­ents in­for­ma­tion on how to ed­u­cate their child, how to have them do well in school.”

Last week, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds said a call by the po­lice for par­ents to be held ac­count­able for their chil­dren’s in­volve­ment in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty was crit­i­cal and will be sup­port­ed by the Gov­ern­ment.

How­ev­er, Swapp said there is a need for bet­ter so­cial sys­tems for chil­dren, in­clud­ing the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, which she says deems very young chil­dren as fail­ures if they do not show aca­d­e­m­ic ex­cel­lence at an ear­ly age. She said this ad­verse­ly af­fects the psy­cho­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of young adults.