MANY of the shooters involved in the recent wave of murders of children are children themselves, according to the Ministry of National Security and Jamaica Foundation for Children.

“We know they are minors,” Ministry of National Security spokesman Donovan Nelson told the Observer. “Because the statistics show that almost all violent crimes in this country are committed by teenagers or people under the age of 25.”

“It’s a complete misnomer to call them gunmen,” agreed Englebert Davis, spokesman of the Jamaica Foundation for Children. “They are not men. Most of them are 16 year-old youths who have access to high-powered weapons and endless ammunition.”

Relatives of the six children murdered in the past few weeks support this theory:

“It was young, young people that came to this house,” said Caryl Palmer, whose 13 year-old daughter, Shawna, was shot dead when gunmen attacked a two-year-old’s birthday party at his home two weeks ago. The 60-year-old, whose one year-old nephew was also critically injured, added: “We know that some of the gunmen who commit these crimes are as young as 14.”

Hilary Nicholson of Women’s Media Watch, which investigates the sociological reasons for crime, told the Observer that older gunmen often deliberately selected children to do their dirty work for them.

“Many of the dirtiest crimes in inner-city areas are committed by youngsters,” she said.

“They have not yet been socialised so they do not have the same protective instincts towards the vulnerable — such as children and old people — as mature adults.”

She said the situation was similar to the use of child soldiers in Africa and that, in both cases, the youngsters were often given drugs.

“If you dose up young children with hard drugs they stop functioning like normal human beings.” She said. “It’s the same as happens in countries like Sierra Leone.”

The Jamaica Foundation for Children agreed that these teenage gunmen are “certainly not in complete control of their actions”. But Davis said it was not always necessary to administer drugs to make them violent:

“Look at John Lee Malvo,” he said. “He wasn’t taking drugs. And look how many killings have been attached to him.”

Both Davis and Wilson suggested that the relationship between US sniper suspects Malvo and John Allen Muhammad was, in many ways, typical of the relationship between the Dons and the teenage gunmen in Jamaica’s inner cities.

“Those boys who don’t have proper guidance are very easily impressed and will look up to older men and will do things for them without the influence of psychotropic drugs,” said Davis.

The national security ministry’s Nelson agreed that those involved in the child killings “are suffering from a severe pathology” but he too said “there is no evidence that this is caused by drugs”.

This is supported by anecdotal evidence from the witnesses to the shootings at Greenwich Farm who said that the gunmen who opened fire with AK47s on a yard full of one- and two-year-olds “did not look or behave like they were on drugs”.

Both the national security ministry and the Jamaica Foundation for Children identified the breakdown of the family as the source of this upsurge in teenage gunmen.

“Many of these gunmen have very bad parents,” said Nelson. “They are often abandoned by their parents or their parents are working abroad so they get into bad company.”

“It is very much possible,” added Davis, “that young boys who do not have a paternal role model are targeted by older men who give them guns and money and then send them out to start taking lives.”

However, psychiatrist Aggrey Irons told the Observer that circumstances did not turn somebody into a criminal. “Being abandoned by your mother,” he added, “sets you up to be anti-social but not to be an assistant sniper.”

The response of the Government to the recent wave of child killings has been to say it will increase security in volatile areas. But according to the Jamaica Foundation for Children, “these quick-fix solutions have been tried time and time again and do not work”.

The only genuine option, said Davis, was “to rebuild society by rebuilding the family”. But he admitted that as this would take at least a generation. “We may see more of these child killings by children before the problem is solved.” The way forward, he said, was to give every child “a sense of respect for itself and for others which could only begin in school”.

Nicholson agreed: “Studies have shown that urban poverty in itself does not create crime,” she said. “What creates crime is when people grow up feeling that no one respects them.”

She identified improving the physical surroundings of inner-city communities as crucial to improving people’s feelings of respect.

“If your garbage is not collected for five years, if you have no toilet and have to go to the bathroom in a scandal bag, you will try to boost your self-respect in other ways. And unfortunately, in the case of teenage boys and young men, that way is often through crime”.