Blaming parents

Mr Roberts’ argument, however, is similar to the message in ads run by American tobacco companies, which contend that, by talking to their kids about smoking, parents ensure that the young people are less likely to take up that unhealthy habit. These ads absolve the tobacco companies of enticing young people though their advertisements, which include selling cigarette-shaped candy in boxes with images of comic-book superheroes on them.

So here we have the Social Development Minister, speaking in a similar vein, arguing that (1) parents are responsible for producing criminals; and (2) that these same parents would not want Government to take over their role. But, when it comes to identifying the factors that produce criminals, are Government policies or parenting practices more pertinent?

There is, in fact, no evidence to suggest that the parenting practices of individual parents influence the social values a child absorbs. Instead, it appears that it is the parental peer group which socialises children. That is, if a child is brought up in a neighbourhood where most of the adults act in a certain way, the child will adopt those modes of behaviour, and will do so even if his or her parents behave quite differently. This may be why, in other societies, there is a correlation between stable family units and low crime rates. In fact, Mr Roberts also asserted that 67 percent of marriages are now in the courts for divorce. Perhaps he has new figures we are not aware of, but the CSO’s 1999 Population and Vital Statistics Report shows an average divorce rate of under 20 percent between 1985 and 1999. It would be very strange if this rate has increased so drastically over the past six years. But it does not appear that divorce is a factor in the production of criminals. It is true that most criminals come from single-parent households, but that is because most single-parent households are also poor households.

It is neighbourhoods and schools which are more important in the socialisation of children, and this is why the Government, particularly the PNM administration, cannot absolve itself of responsibility for the plague of criminals now wreaking havoc in the nation. After all, it was the PNM administration which set up the junior secondary school on a shift system in the 1970s. That was politically cunning, but a pedagogical disaster. Young people were taught by untrained teachers in a system which left them free for half the day. The result was that the youths, intellectually and socially, came out from the school less and less fit for the challenges of the wider world.

It was also the PNM administration which set up various housing schemes which, by putting poor people in cramped conditions, facilitated the rise of a criminal class. After all, the Government can hardly deny that it is those areas where the PNM had put the most emphasis on housing programmes which have the highest crime rates. In similar fashion, the make-work programmes of DEWD, now URP, also played a part in creating the dependency syndrome, which is also a factor in making criminals.

So Minister Roberts, and by extension the Government, cannot shift their responsibilities on to the shoulder of parents. That approach is also fruitless. A government, after all, cannot change parenting practices. But a government can change its policies, and such changes are needed if the society is to cease producing so many young criminals.