Gail Alexan­der

Recul­tur­is­ing par­ents on how they speak and in­ter­act with chil­dren, strength­en­ing Com­mu­ni­ty Po­lice and pro­vid­ing men­tor­ship and em­pow­er­ment to young peo­ple are need­ed to as­sist in pre­vent­ing youths from grav­i­tat­ing to gangs.

The rec­om­men­da­tions came yes­ter­day from of­fi­cials of the Eye on De­pen­den­cy and Vi­sion on Mis­sion agen­cies when they ap­peared be­fore Par­lia­ment’s Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

The JSC, chaired by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s Fitzger­ald Hinds, met to com­plete dis­cus­sions with the groups on ways to pre­vent or­gan­ised crime and gangs from at­tract­ing youths.

JSC mem­ber Kei­th Scot­land not­ed that gangs have be­come very so­phis­ti­cat­ed now.

“There is even some­thing called a Zess­er Drug now,” he not­ed.

JSC mem­ber Nigel de Fre­itas al­so said that some may find them­selves in the dark­ness and the on­ly light seen to em­anate may be from gangs.

Eye on De­pen­den­cy (EOD) di­rec­tor Garth St Clair called for strength­en­ing of the Com­mu­ni­ty Po­lice unit, since he said the most po­lice that peo­ple in some ar­eas might see is Tac­ti­cal of­fi­cers and the Com­mu­ni­ty Po­lice were need­ed to deal with do­mes­tic com­mu­ni­ty is­sues - which could head off crime hap­pen­ing - more than of­fi­cers “dressed to kill.” How­ev­er, he said com­mu­ni­ty po­lice of­ten didn’t even have suf­fi­cient ve­hi­cles to reach is­sues. He added that hav­ing more safe­ty of­fi­cers in schools would al­so make a big dif­fer­ence

St Clair al­so called for at­ten­tion to be paid to youths who may have low self-es­teem. He said some may be go­ing to school hun­gry in the morn­ing, or com­ing from en­vi­ron­ments where par­ents are fight­ing and may be com­pared to one of the er­rant par­ents.

He not­ed the stu­dents may be the tar­get of mis­di­rect­ed anger by a par­ent.

“So there must be a recul­tur­al­i­sa­tion of par­ents in how they speak to chil­dren and in­ter­act with them,” St Clair said.

He al­so rec­om­mend­ed day­care cen­tres at some places which of­fered pro­grammes. He said some women in a Beetham pro­gramme had to drop out since the stipend they re­ceived wasn’t enough to cov­er day­care costs for their ba­bies.

EOD sec­re­tary Natasha Nunez called for Par­ent Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (PTAs) meet­ings to be manda­to­ry for pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools, since she not­ed is­sues in both sec­tors - par­ents and teach­ers.

VOA chair­man Ger­ard Wil­son said the “soft­er skills” of psy­chol­o­gists are be­ing lost and this should be used to keep in touch with how youths at pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools feel. He said youths may see gang lead­ers mov­ing around in nice cars, clothes and with nice-look­ing women and grav­i­tate to gang lifestyle be­cause of want­i­ng this al­so. He said there must be at­ten­tion in the school sys­tem to what is at­tract­ing young peo­ple to gangs.

VOA CEO Giselle Chance rec­om­mend­ed a holis­tic ap­proach of en­er­gies from ear­ly child­hood and oth­er schools with na­tion­al youth or­gan­i­sa­tions to pro­vide pro­gramme for youths, as they of­ten try to em­u­late gang lead­ers’ iden­ti­ties. Chance said men­tor­ship, em­pow­er­ment and en­tre­pre­neur­ship is need­ed for youths not just hand­outs

Both agen­cies said they’d al­so en­gaged the ju­di­cia­ry. But St Clair said where the drug treat­ment court was con­cerned, he’d heard most judges didn’t sup­port this court. Wil­son said the restora­tive jus­tice as­pect is al­so im­por­tant from the sen­tenc­ing stage up.