April 18, 2023
The Caribbean’s Regional Symposium-Violence as a Public Health Issue – The Crime Challenge started on Monday with many of the region’s leaders in Trinidad and Tobago to talk shop about the unprecedented violence sweeping this region.
There are also other officials as well, from criminologists, police officers, sociologists and academics, to help us wrap our minds around the issue. We have to see the matter for what it is and deal with it directly.
To be honest we noticed this trend when Jamaica went into a serious round of murders in 2018 when Prime Minister Andrew Holness was forced to put in place curfew for certain parishes. We said then as we will say now from what we are witnesses is that these crime trends tend to spill over into the other Caribbean countries. So, Bahamian, Vincentian, St Lucian and Virgin Island leaders may feel comfortable with the false notion that the crime problem is Jamaica’s, but it will soon come at your door. This is particularly for the Commonwealth Caribbean countries.
The problem, quite frankly, are with the young men in the region. How are they enticed from the good path and on to a life of crime is the dynamic we should be trying to figure out. Anything other than that is dealing with the problem after the damage has been done.
The symposium seems to be a bit more of chest thumping and explaining the problem from our leaders than it has to do with putting forward solutions, which we expect from politicians and it is not their fault either. They are what they are for the most part.
The bounty of this crime symposium should be in the professional presentations from the people that deal with at risk youth if our assumption is correct. Sadly, there is no magic silver bullet to solve the young male problem either. So we really have to work at solutions on saving them.
Missing from this symposium are any semblance of these women’s groups at these events. But yet they are the first out of the gate backslapping one another on their achievements, but are nowhere to be found when we need the heavy lifting. As usual, it always has to be a man out in the front. But the sad fact is, some of these men have no business being in the front either because it is their generation that has let these other young men down this path of death and despair.
What a position we find ourselves in. We hope that there is some positive information share at this symposium, at the very least.