School violence now rearing its ugly head

Last Sunday Newsday dealt with the problem of our Prison Reform. Arising out of that article, Sunday Newsday was informed about a number of incidents taking place in the juvenile schools. Today we explore the issue of youth delinquency and violence in schools, which has been occurring more frequently in recent times.

What was told to us is that if youth delinquency and violence in schools is not dealt with now, TT society will have an even larger problem of deviance and crime to deal with in the coming years. Even though people tried to tell Education Minister Hazel Manning about the severity of school violence and the former Minister of National Security, Howard Chin Lee about the problems of juvenile delinquency, they’ve  treated with the issues in an adhoc and haphazard manner over the past year and occasionally put it on the back burner. But Director of UWI’s Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice, Professor Ramesh Deosaran, said the problem is now “rearing its ugly head” and government will have to take a more serious approach to deal with the scourge. He said if this is not done now, government will have a more “serious and dangerous” future to deal with.

Mrs Manning met with a team from the Ministry of National Security earlier this week in an attempt to isolate some of the factors responsible for fostering the kind of indiscipline and violence currently pervading the secondary school system. She said things such as leadership styles, management structure and the physical environment, as well as teacher and student absenteeism, were examined. About two weeks ago, students from the Tranquillity Government Secondary School attacked other students from St Mary’s College. As a result, Tranquillity Government Secondary school was temporarily closed to deal with the problem of violence in the school. There were also several other incidents of violence, such as stabbings and fights in other schools along the East/West corridor, including the UWI campus. There was also violence in central and south schools.

While the problem of school violence in secondary schools has been occurring more frequently in recent past, there have also been complaints about certain levels of violence in the juvenile homes such as the Youth Training Centre (YTC), St Michael’s Home for boys and the St Jude’s home for girls. Sources said when these youths run away from the homes, they end up in gangs and in most cases, live a life of crime. As a result, that is why there are so many youths in the nation’s prisons. Deosaran said by the time they experience this form of criminal life and go to jail, they come out more hardened and experienced criminals. He deduced that if government does not deal with violence in schools now, TT will have a very tough job dealing with more criminals in years to come. Sources told Sunday Newsday about the high incidences of homosexuality at St Michael’s and abuse, in which the boys were allegedly sodomising the younger and weaker ones and trying to get them to conform to their clique.

Forensic and Clinical psychologist Dr Stanley Bishop, who was formerly attached to the school, described the situation as getting from “bad to worse.” “The place is a breeding ground for homosexuality,” he said. A senior official at the school did not wish to comment, but according to Dr Bishop, the longer the problems are left unattended, there will be a number of traumatised youths turning to a life of crime because of the psychological traumas they are experiencing. Within the past year, about four youths from St Michael’s were killed after running away from the school, possibly as a result of turning to gangs and criminal life. Other sources said there is a lack of security, which is why the boys could run away so easily. One female senior worker complained that there was nothing for the youths to do and they are allowed to participate in activities without much supervision. She said only recently, there has been talk about making St Michael’s into a trade school, but she argued there should be qualified teachers to help the youths through the rehabilitation pro-cess. “I have had enough and the management and staff are doing nothing about it except quarrelling among themselves,” she lamented. She said there was a huge indiscipline problem with the youths. “They curse at you and they want to beat you up when you try to correct them. They even try to beat up the security officer,” she disclosed. Dr Bishop said if government has intensions of making the rehabilitative or correctional institutions into industrial/trade schools, he wants to know why the youths were coming into the system worse off than when they arrived.

Sources said about 25 percent of the youths in these schools are street children or children who were dumped in the institution by parents who did not want them because they were difficult to handle. Psychologists pointed out that parents have to be mindful of this and warned them that there will be more negative consequences by “dumping” their difficult children into these homes for selfish reasons. At the St Jude’s home for girls, sources told similar stories in which the girls formed gangs and sexually attacked other students. “Those who are being attacked and can’t handle it are running away from the school and are ending upon the streets. When they end up on the streets, they then take out their anger and frustrations on the wider society,” one source said. A YTC official agreed there was a high indiscipline problem with the youths but said the authorities try to deal with the problem as best as they could. Sources spoke about abuse against these youths, pointing that according to the law, they are not supposed to receive any form of punishment unless authorities receive an order stating so from a magistrate. “That is why recividism (going back to crime), is so high among our youths, because the approach does not lend itself to the rehabilitative process,” both Dr Bishop and Deosaran lamented.