By Nigel Williams
It is a familiar sight in many depressed urban communities and increasingly in rural areas as well: idle young men sitting at street corners all day. It is these groups, observers believe, that churn out Guyana’s ever-growing criminal class. Facing hopelessness in a social and political system that offers little opportunity, most start out by begging and eventually graduate – some to petty crime, others to drugs, guns and unspeakable violence. And observers’ views vary only slightly on the path that takes them there.
Is it an indictment on the present administration, as some observers argue, that in the 16 years it has been in office, it has “raised” a number of teen killers? Minister of Human Services and Social Security Priya Manickchand, disagreed. Urging that the plight of teenagers who turned to guns not be politicized, she stated that although some of the criminals today had been born under the present regime their lives had been influenced by what occurred several years before. Manickchand admitted that her ministry may not be able to reach the 14-year-old boy aback of Buxton or Agricola to steer him away from a life of crime, but noted that those closest to such a child should equally share the responsibility of offering him hope. “Child protection is not only about programmes, but children need the right environment, and the politicians and the social workers will all have to work hand in hand to accomplish this,” the minister asserted.
Manickchand noted that juvenile delinquency was no new phenomenon, adding that her ministry, as well as the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport, had been working to address the needs of vulnerable youths, although she acknowledged that some of the programmes were not reaching everyone.
Sociologists and criminologists say that there is a rise in youth violence globally. In Guyana, most of the crimes today are committed by young men — some still in their 20s. Over the past three years also, scores of teenagers have passed through the courts for their alleged involvement in serious crimes and a number of them have perished during gunfights.
Broken families
Marriage and family life expert, Stanton Adams, was of the view that the extent of teenagers’ involvement in violent crime pointed to a breakdown in the institution of the family. He said the situation was so stark that the question should be asked as to where would we find the next generation of leaders. Adams dismissed the view of some social commentators that poverty was the number one contributing factor to the rise in crime.
“People can be poor yet have dignity,” Adams, who is also the executive director of the Guyana Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists, said. The dignity of which he spoke came from the kind of nurturing one got from one’s family, and if the family was failing to carry out its duties then it would only produce delinquents, he continued. Adams argued that poverty could not be totally eradicated, but that values once taught would remain.
Recently, a teenager in Buxton was charged with murdering 11 people at Lusignan. Two other young men — Jermaine ‘Skinny’ Charles and another referred to as ‘Nasty Man’ — are also before the court on a number of murder charges.
Frequently, parents of teens caught up in crime will say that they tried their best, but their children just chose the wrong path. Asked whether he believed this was indeed the case in some instances, Adams said the possibility existed. However, he noted, many parents saw parenting as just producing offspring, when it was also about producing disciplined, mature and self-governing offspring. “Once you have not done this then you have failed. You have not done your best,” Adams said.
Speaking directly to teenagers’ involvement in violent crimes, Adams said males were being neglected in society. Pointing to the many organisations that dealt with empowering women and girls, he noted that none addressed the needs of men and boys. “Nobody sees boys as a vulnerable group and they are left sometimes on their own… so we have some turning to drugs and becoming serial killers.” Adams further noted that the growing problems among teenage boys were partly due to the absence of father figures in the home. He told Stabroek News that most of the single-parent households in the Caribbean were headed by women. “We need the fathers back in the homes…even if they are not there physically they must be there for their children in their education and other areas,” Adams said. He maintained that a number of the teen killers today would have grown up without even having the opportunity to sit and talk with their fathers. “This is a very serious issue and we need to address it,” Adams said.
Asked what was wrong with a society that produced child killers, Adams said if people could not find anything to be attached to, to give them hope and comfort, they would turn to drugs and crime. “We have people with no sense of significance roaming about our society; they have no role models, in some cases no parents or absentee parents.” It is this group whom drug lords prey on to carry out their nefarious activities, he said.
President Bharrat Jagdeo, speaking recently at an event at Babu John, Port Mourant, Berbice weighed in on this topic, telling the young people who were there that they needed to believe in something. “We need to have an ideal,” Jagdeo said, adding that these days he was hearing a lot of talk, but sometimes felt that youths were not committed to an ideal any longer. “When I travel through this country I see people, young people, waiting for the next hundred dollars coming from the States, not wanting to work. The work ethic is gone, [they are] drinking every single day [and] beating up the women,” Jagdeo declared.
Blame the parents
Speaking on behalf of young people in Buxton, a number of whom had joined criminal gangs, prominent Buxtonian, Deon Abrams, laid some of the blame on parents whom he said were responsible for the lives their children led today.
In an interview with Stabroek News, Abrams revealed that in the initial stage of the criminal uprising in that community, “some parents were accommodating to their sons gravitating to a life of crime.” Coupled with this, he said, was the breakdown of the family unit.
“However,” he said, “there are cases where parents were against their children involving in criminal activities and spoke out, but the result was that they were threatened.”
A teacher by profession, Abrams said that many of the young men caught up in this situation were from a generation which the education system had failed. “Most of them are products of Buxton Community High School. Community schools, over the years, have been dumping grounds for children who need special attention. The fact is that they were not given the sort of attention needed. They passed through without any skills and are now misfits without options,” Abrams said.
Asked whether the elders in Buxton still looked out for children who had strayed, Abrams responded yes, but that it was not like it used to be. “Some of the parents are themselves lacking parenting,” he explained, noting that the many teenage mothers and fathers could hardly take care of themselves, let alone deal with parenting.
Asked what was propelling the violence among youths in his community, Abrams disagreed that the situation existed only in Buxton. He noted that teen criminals today were motivated by money and believed that crime was a means of acquiring money easily. He said many of the young men in Buxton who had turned to a life of crime grew up in a society where they heard of big robberies and also partook of the proceeds of those crimes, since the criminals in the past took back some of the money to the community. “So they grew up seeing money floating around and this would have influenced them,” Abrams said.
He added that in pursuit of power, some of the young men would have gravitated to crime. “When they have a gun it gives them a certain sense of power that they believe they can never possess.”
He went on to say that young men involved in crime were often so emboldened by the possession of a gun, they disrespected their parents and peers. “Once they hold a gun no one can talk to them,” Abrams said.
Questioned as to what could be done to reverse the tide, Abrams replied that a number of residents had given up speaking to the teenagers bent on committing crimes. He said this was so because the gunmen themselves would issue threats to those they perceived to be in opposition to what they were doing. He noted that at one time in the village, anyone seen not to be in favour of the gunmen became a target and was branded an informant. “So people became fearful to comment on certain things and were careful who they spoke to,” Abrams disclosed.
Freedom fighters
Abrams said, however, that there was hardly anything Buxtonians could do now to stop the criminals. He said if the state with the armed forces could not deal with them for over seven years now, Buxtonians could not do it either.
There was a pool of people in the initial stage of the criminal uprising in the village, he explained, who thought the escapees could have “brought control to the PPP/C government,” and freed Afro-Guyanese from economic and social oppression. He said this view was strongly entrenched in the psyche of some of the residents, and led to big marches in the community whenever one of the five prison escapees died. After a while, however, the very gunmen who had been hailed as freedom fighters became rebellious. “People became aware that the thing was not working after black people were being killed, and so some villagers shunned the gunmen,” Abrams says.
He expressed the view there may be pockets of people who were willing to uphold such a revolution, but their numbers were getting thin.
Asked what was necessary to transform the village, Abrams responded that there needed to be a transformation of Guyana. He reiterated that crime was not just a Buxton problem, although acknowledged that the criminals had made Buxton one of their bases. He said Buxton had been chosen as a criminal base because throughout history the village had always been a militant one and had played an integral part in the struggle during the 1950s and ’60s. “The militant nature of the village would have led many people to see Buxton as their salvation. Even in the protests, people looked to Buxtonians for the stamina, so it is not a surprise that the village was chosen for any kind of revolutionary action,” Abrams asserted.
‘Guns have killed the struggle’
But Buxton had run out of steam lately and residents were not as militant as they were in the past, and this, Abrams said, was because of the emergence of guns. “Guns have killed the struggle,” he said, noting that with guns the prospect of death was very real.
According to Abrams, those who had been involved in the earlier struggles in the village would certainly have seen the difference between what the struggle was then and what it is now. Back then people had been prepared to get on the streets and throw back tear gas at the police. But the emergence of guns had driven a deep fear into them.
Minister Manickchand said her government’s policies to protect children from, not only crime, but other social ills, were sound. However, she said, often citizens were not very receptive and some had not been responding. Manickchand said her ministry had rescued hundreds of youths from the streets, who could have become violent criminals. The minister believed the onus was on all Guyanese to ensure there was a reverse in youth violence, and urged parents to take the lead.
Asked about her ministry’s family and welfare programme, the minister conceded that it was not up to scratch as not enough focus had been placed on this area.
But Abrams felt there was a deliberate effort by the PPP government to shift resources away from black communities and direct them to Indian villages, creating a situation where black youths were deprived of opportunities. Abrams said this had been happening at the level of central government and also at the regional level, and even some projects that were funded by donor agencies were handed out to supporters of the government.
The Buxtonian believed that the policies of the administration were also a contributing factor to the problems faced by many youths, not least in Buxton. “If changes are not made at the national level, Buxton would be repeated over and over again,” Abrams warned.
