YOUTH unemployment in Jamaica has reached crisis proportions and is now socially unsustainable. In 2013, unemployment among Jamaicans 14 to 24 years old was approximately 39 per cent.

This is an appalling waste of a labour force in its prime years. In addition to which there is a direct link between crime and unemployment, as we all know very well. The cost of crime is enormous.

In economic terms it discourages production and investment. The consequential cost of security is a major burden on the country, on every business and household.

Injuries caused by violence are estimated to cost the healthcare system 15 per cent of its annual budget. The human suffering is immeasurable. It is not possible to put a monetary value on a human life.

The murder rate in Jamaica is outrageously high and out of control, despite the efforts of the police, and 80 per cent of inner-city communities do not feel safe at night.

One in four Jamaicans has been a victim of crime in the last year. Most of the perpetrators of violent crime are males aged 15 to 29 years old, the vast majority of whom are sucked into criminal activities as a means of survival and are not hardcore criminals.

They are typically jobless and not enrolled in a school or training institution. Crime prevention must involve tackling youth unemployment because the most effective antidote to crime is creating opportunities for youths to find jobs.

Note that we did not say the Government must provide direct employment opportunities because it does not have the fiscal resources to mount a large-scale meaningful public sector employment programme.

What the Government must do is to promote employment for youth. It must devise ways to do more to ensure that the macroeconomic policies it pursues are designed to create employment, not just more production.

It must doggedly promote economic activity that generates jobs, especially in small, medium and micro enterprises.

Creating employment opportunities is only one part of the equation. The complementary part of the equation is ensuring that youths have the skills to fill those jobs. Approximately 90 per cent of the unattached youth have no skills.

They are what Sir Arthur Lewis, the Caribbean Nobel Prize-winning economist once called “unemployable”. Education and training need to receive more human and financial resources.

The number of “uneducated” youth leaving the school system has to be reduced. For those who have left the school system but are still uneducated, there must be more opportunities for vocational and skills training. Given the paucity of financial resources in the public and private sectors, the solution is to get more out of the existing resource pool. This requires innovative thinking.

An astounding 60 per cent of children in urban schools carry some kind of weapon to school for protection, against the background of inadequate security on school premises and very large class sizes, which make it impossible to have an orderly learning environment. Let’s put on our thinking caps.

Perhaps some of the unemployed youth from communities around the schools could be employed and trained to provide a secure and orderly classroom environment and patrol school premises where incidents of violence are committed.