Caricom’s Social Develop-ment and Crime Prevention Action Plan has the potential to make a significant dent in youth violence across member states, based on the results of its implementation in Trinidad and Belize as part of a pilot project designed to reduce violence in four member states.
In a press release the Caricom Secretariat said more than 60 stakeholders from T&T who assembled at a November 25 meeting to discuss the project to be developed in response to the escalating gang-related violence have identified the breakdown of the family and poor parenting as two of the chief contributors to the formation of gangs and gang-related activities. Several communities in T&T are now under a state of emergency, due to escalating violence.
This was the last of four stakeholder consultations facilitated by the Caricom Secretariat with support from the United Nations Develop-ment Programme in four member states. It is the second stage of a four-phase social intervention project designed to reduce youth gang violence in targeted member states: Belize, Guy-ana, St Kitts and Nevis and Trinidad and Tobago.
In endorsing the stakeholders’ opinions, Caricom Secre-tariat Programme Manager, Sustainable Development, Beverley Reynolds, who is tasked with guiding the implementation of the project said the fact finding stage of the consultations done at the sub-regional level had underscored the need for more comprehensive targeted programmes including parenting and community education to address the problem of gangs and gang violence among young people. She also stressed the importance of treating with other underlying risk factors; chief of which she listed as high unemployment rates, high rates of school drop-outs, social marginalisation, identity crisis and poor self-esteem.”
Reynolds explained that young people needed to feel a sense of belonging; they want to be engaged in meaningful activities designed to boost their self-esteem and help in their self-actualization pro-cess. In the absence of these pull factors she said, the push factors propel them into the crippling circle of gangs. “We need to topple the myth that gangs are families…” she emphasized, adding that “Gangs are not families and cannot substitute for the supportive environment provided by a good family.” However, she acknowledged that in the absence of such a supportive environment “young people will seek to identify with gangs which they perceive gives them a sense of identity, belonging and control over their lives.” In this regard, Reynolds underscored the need to strengthen the protective factors that would help to build the resilience of young people to make them less vulnerable to peer pressure and other risk factors.
Caricom said there is documented evidence to support Reynolds’s claims in their book: Juvenile Delinquency – Trends and Perspectives, Rutter and Giller (1983) noted that “the family characteristics most strongly associated with delinquency are parental criminality, ineffective supervision and discipline, familial discord and disharmony, weak parent-child relationships, large family size, and psycho-social disadvantage.”
The release said specific programme initiatives that have been recommended to address these problems are evident in the activities directed towards supporting families, developing positive parenting skills, providing respite care and preventing family violence. These include family support services such as parent-effectiveness training and family stress management techniques aimed at providing assistance in dealing with family relations and community development initiatives such as education, skills and entrepreneurship training, public education, counselling services and health care.
Four-pillared
These are some of the initiatives and principles which underline the four-pillared Caricom Social Development and Crime Prevention Action Plan that was developed in tandem with the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to prevent and reduce violence, foster social inclusion, promote integration; empower victims and protect the environment and economic resources in member states. Convinced that social education, health and cultural development is a potent anti-dote to crime and violence, Caricom’s Council for Human and Social Development (COHSOD) at its 12th meeting in 2008 mandated the Secretariat to collaborate with international organisations and Third States in developing a regional crime prevention initiative to complement the national law-enforcement efforts already in train. The mandate was endorsed by the Caricom Heads of Government at their 12th Inter-Sessional Meeting in March 2009. At its 20th meeting held in Guyana in 2010, the COHSOD endorsed the Action Plan and gave full support to the national consultations, especially with key players in the education sector.
According to the release, the plan is rooted in sound theory and research which indicates that in Canada, the US, Europe and other countries social interventions have spawned positive results; they are cost-effective, and provide additional social benefits. “Researchers now conclude that social interventions can yield positive, measurable benefits within three years, with reductions in crime of 25% to 50% within 10 years,” the release said.
Trinidad and Tobago and Belize have so far demonstrated that crime prevention through social development does work. Trinidad’s Former Caricom Youth Ambassador Ryssa Brathwaite-Tobias and her team of youth workers shared with the stakeholders a social intervention project – the Citizens Security Programme – being implemented by the Ministry of National Security in 22 violence plagued communities in Trinidad. The programme involves several activities such as skills-based training and other training interventions, community signage and beautification, public education campaigns, spelling and football competitions, health care and funding for smaller community based projects – a similar initiative is being implemented in Belize.
Brathwaite-Tobias and her team presented statistics at the November 25 meeting which indicated significant reduction in crime and violence in communities where the CSP was implemented: Between 2008 and 2010, murders trended down from 71 to 48, while woundings and shootings dropped from 86 to 68 within the same period. It is on these grounds that the Secretariat is hoping that its pilot project on youth gangs and gang violence will take root and ultimately spread to other violence plagued communities in Trinidad and Tobago.
Caricom said stakeholders selected the densely populated suburban community of Enterprise with an estimated population of 13, 000 of which 60% are between the ages of 10 and 30 for its implementation. The project will build on existing initiatives in health, education, training and edutainment to promote the well-being and empowerment of young people in this community. It is based on the philosophy that “when youth flourish crime and violence will diminish” and has adopted a community-based and participatory approach that highlights the importance of community development and empowerment in crime prevention.
However, if a community development programme is to succeed, the controls that lead to reduced crime cannot be imposed externally; they must emerge from changes within the community itself and mobilized by the community itself. “The CARICOM Secretariat can initiate and facilitate but the community and its leaders are pivotal to the sustainability and success of such an intervention,” it said.
Nevertheless, if the good practices demonstrated in Belize and Trinidad and Tobago are anything to go by so far, then Caricom’s Social Development and Crime Prevention Action Plan arguably has the potential to make a significant dent in youth violence across member states. Therefore, the secretariat awaits the roll out of the remaining components “fully convinced that given the important financial, social and personal costs of crime, investments in crime prevention through social development does make economic and social sense.”
