A LOSS OF DIRECTION

The statement made by Her Excellency, Acting President Dr Linda Baboolal at Sunday’s National Day of Prayer at the Queen’s Park Savannah that “too many of our youths live by the gun” was borne out by the Page One headline in yesterday’s Newsday: “3 More Marked For Death — Wanted Killer Shot Dead,” as well as by news reports of serious crimes during the year. Already 216 persons have been reportedly murdered for 2005 and a substantial number of their alleged killers have been either in their teens or 20s. In turn, the young man, Tony Selman, whose murder at 21, prompted the headline, was himself being sought for questioning, according to Police officers, with respect to several gang- related deaths.

The thousands of persons who marched in response to the Inter-Religious Organisation’s call for a day of prayer and walk for peace heard the lament of the Acting President: “Too many (youths) waste their abilities. Too many of our adults are failing to teach our youths values and standards of behaviour or give them guidelines by which to live. Too many of us are not the role models needed for the youths to follow.” And although the several contributory factors to delinquency and serious crimes in the country which Dr Baboolal pointed out have already been stressed, and repeatedly — lack of positive parenting and positive examples by all too many adults, as well as the incidence of negative peer pressure — nonetheless it is crucial that they be restated.

What is needed is a multi-pronged attack by the State and NGOs which, in addition to the Ministry of Education’s current programme of constructing pre-schools and manning them with trained personnel, will see a parallel programme embracing expanded adult education classes. In turn, there should be emphasis placed on the inculcating in the youngsters in homes, at early childhood centres, primary and secondary schools of the values of belief in themselves. Meanwhile, in addition to the above and stress on academic and/or vocational training, they should be taught anger management as well as the values of respect for the rights of others; respect for their parents and adults, generally, and how to get along with their peers.

Admittedly, the results of all of this will be noted in the medium and/or long term. In the interim there will have to be judicious persuasion. In turn, where the courts have determined that youngsters (and adults as well) who have erred have to be placed in correctional institutions, an important ingredient of the function of these institutions must be rehabilitation. Recidivism should not be dismissed simply as a failure of individual inmates to reform, but the failure, in part, of the prison system to coax them away from a return to lives of crime and, ultimately, to the correctional centres. Society cannot afford itself the dubious luxury of figuratively throwing up its hands in horror, insisting that it cannot wait for strategies to succeed. Short-term measures of additional cruel and unusual punishment, while they may appear to bring short-term results will, in the end, create far greater long-term problems.

There has been a loss of direction by an uncomfortable number of the country’s youths and Acting President Dr Baboolal’s statement, that too many of them “live by the gun,” must not be seen in isolation. Instead, it should be viewed in the broader context of her added comments that “too many of our adults are failing to teach our youths values and standards of behaviour or give them guidelines by which to live” and her call to NGOs to collaborate to tackle the “many sides of problems facing the society.” Dr Baboolal’s challenge to the NGOs to collaborate clearly implies that others with whom the NGOs will have to work jointly must include, in addition to the Government, the youths themselves, parents, prison officers and concerned citizens if the affected among the youths are to find and gain a sense of worth and direction.