Effective crime plan starts early

The importance of reading, art, music and sport training must also be in the mix of what is expected of a good all-round education.

These weekly classes throughout early childhood should instil a sense of self-pride and accomplishment.

Extra marks should be given for excellence to cement the idea that these lessons are important and rewarding.

It should not be that only the wealthy can purchase the basics of good education because they can pay for their children to attend private institutions.

Government schools should offer the same quality teaching curriculum.

Being from a poor background should not preclude one from understanding the importance of selfworth and the rewards of the upward social mobility of an excellent education.

The importance of reading extensively from an early age cannot be overemphasised. Reading is the most powerful weapon that can shape a life to reject the practice of inhuman criminality.

It is not by chance that the offspring of the financially challenged who are left to fend for themselves in dangerous situations invariably make up the statistics regarding early death and involvement in criminality.

Their lives are at risk from day one.

The child that is forced by circumstances to leave school early must be aware of the possibility of an early death because of choosing criminality.

It is a governmental responsibility to each national that the tenets of good behaviour need to be instilled in the first seven years of schooling.

It is to be hoped that in ten years time homicides in TT would be reduced to practically zilch. It will not significantly occur in 2017, 2018 or 2019.

The secret of effective crime reduction resides in the school bags of the nation’s children.

All present-day crime plans are ineffective without societal education.

We need to start somewhere and it will have to be now, in 2016.

Lynette Joseph Diego Martin