Coming storm of lost generation

THE EDITOR: A man kidnaps a young couple and then detains them in a makeshift grave for days on end, masked assailants fire indiscriminately into crowds of people on a basketball court, rape and buggery of minors, paid assassins playing out scenes from an action movie in Movietowne. The fact is these people are beyond redemption, there is no social reformatory system, perhaps in the world and certainly not here in Trinidad, that can save these offenders from what they have become. The present band of killers and criminals are lost to our society and there is truthfully no way back for them save and except for perhaps, the rare instance of an offender subjected to divine intervention and inspiration. The public outcry that is taking place in light of the out of control crime rate is appropriate and only time will tell if it will be effective, unfortunately where crime is concerned time is something we in Trinidad do not have on our side.

Never mind year 2020, we should look no further than year 2010! By that time the present crop of secondary school students, average age 13 yrs, will be aged 20. What can we expect in seven short years from those who at age 13 are already demonstrating a propensity for violence and anger and an efficient capacity for lawlessness and indiscipline more in keeping with persons twice that age? The newspaper reports that interest me most are those that reflect the condition of secondary school students in our country, gang beatings, rowdiness and hooliganism, illicit sex, weapons possession, drug abuse, high failure rates which are all the order of the day. This... is the coming storm, what we are experiencing now with regard to crime and the breakdown in social cohesion will pale when compared to the arrival of this future lost generation on the streets, ghettos and fashionable suburbs of this sweet TT. We will all of us wonder then, why we did not act now to save our country and our children from ourselves and how it is we let our future slip away from our grasp and guidance. Time to heal our country may well have run out, the storm is coming and we are disastrously ill-prepared.

JEREMY A. JONES
Port-of-Spain