By Nadine Wilson-Harris
Local experts are confident that parents, schools and churches can sway children from a life of crime and gangsterism by being more active in their lives.
Protection, provision, inclusion, and training offered to children through gangs have made the criminal network very enticing, but despite these pull factors, families, churches, and communities can win.
Chairperson of Parents’ Alliance Jamaica, Bishop Herro “Steve” Blair (Jr.), finds that many boys especially, are in need of purpose, direction, guidance, and mentoring. He believes parents should play a greater role in encouraging their children to dream and then assisting them to accomplish those dreams, so that scamming for example, would not be so attractive.
“A young man told me that he would never want to have a full-time job again because he came out of high school, qualified for university, could not get a loan, was treated shabbily, and then a friend introduced him to scamming. And he says, ‘I will never, ever try to or to go back to school because I’m making my living and this is what my community does,” the pastor recounted during the Freedom Come Rain newspaper’s Freedom Talks forum recently.
Blair, a former prison chaplain, believes exposing boys to programmes offered by the Heart/Trust NTA and other initiatives that can help them to work anywhere in the world could be proffered as more attractive options for youths.
“We have the opportunities; we have the answers, but we’ve not found a way to present them, to keep them involved, or to get them to believe,” he said.
Police Commissioner Major General Antony Anderson noted last year that 875 charges had been laid against youth between ages of 15 and 17 years old for serious crimes and violence committed between 2019 and 2022.
“These are individuals, who, if we do not act collectively, are getting into an early career of violence and crime. We are bringing this to the nation’s attention because as a society, we have to decide how we are going to save them,” Anderson stated during a press briefing last November.
“We all must take this matter more seriously, as the pandemic of violence is infecting our children. They are not merely innocent victims of violence; in far too many instances, children and adolescents are actually the perpetrators themselves,” he added.
While the life of a gangster is generally very short, and even while alive, there is fear and anxiety, the number of gangs in Jamaica is on the increase. Minister of National Security Dr. Horace Chang told Parliament in 2020 that some 389 gangs were identified as operating in the country. Kingston Western, Kingston Central, Kingston Eastern, St Andrew Central, and St Andrew South Police Divisions, accounted for 249 or 64 per cent of the total number of known gangs across Jamaica at the time.
Tracy Ann Taffe-Thompson, who is a guidance counsellor, believes gangs have succeeded at recruiting youths because they give them an opportunity to “self actualise”.
“We have taught our students from early that they are to visualise themselves as a particular adult doing a particular thing. We have trained them to say when you look at yourself as an adult, probably in your twenties or thirties, how do you see yourself? Now they can see themselves that way, but how are they going to achieve it? So these gangs, they are providing all these things that our students need, that is not being provided for at home, in the schools, and even so in the church,” she shared.
She urged parents and the wider community to look at the quality of what is being offered to children.
Police sergeant Howard Montaque finds that gang leaders are often seen as role models for the boys they recruit and are looked on in a positive light.
“In their mind, they get to do whatever [and] they get to live a lifestyle that is comforting to them, and as a result, they can then go on to acquire stuff, whether it be material or otherwise, oftentimes material,” he stated.
Bishop Blair (Jr) believes that organisations and communities can partner to help save more of these boys from the gangs.
“We have some work to do and we have to give them that chance to dream and [show them] how to get that dream accomplished,” he said.