Terrence Bernard, psychiatrist at Jamaica’s Correctional Services Department, says that the increasing incidence of crime and violence perpetrated by children and among children is indicative of a more sinister phenomenon at work.

Children, he suggests, hold an appeal for criminals as recruits to perpetrate crime for the development of their criminal networks. “Anyone who wants to perpetrate anything, they have to perpetrate it through children, whether it is a don or somebody who is pushing drugs or even politicians,” argues Bernard, who is also a consultant to the Ministry of Health’s Programme for Alternative Student Support.

“They realise that if they want to build a thriving business they have to target children. And then in communities, children are in awe of the don.”

The awe children hold for the don, he notes, is due very often to the absence of their own father figure and/or deep bonding with their mothers or other parental figures. It means, therefore, that a lack of parents and good parenting leave children susceptible to criminals.

“The don is a person who needs power, who needs control. He may be able to exert power over adults but the kind of adoration from children will be more and he has to think of his legacy. And with the single parent family, you find that a lot of children are searching for something. They may look for it among the peer groups or among adults,” explains Bernard.

He says that the violence in schools in recent times is a microcosm of happenings in the larger society.

“The don wants power and admiration and the child wants the same thing. In the community, the don is the don. But when the child goes to school, he is the don,” he says.

“He forms a group at school and they follow him like he follows the don. So the things that happen in the community then happen in the school. You will find that they will beat up other children and extort money from other children, like you have in the community.”

Adds Bernard: “It is a very twisted thing sometimes. They may not have a father so the don is the father figure. The children are being groomed to take over.” The prison psychiatrist, who treats mainly juveniles, also notes that there are cases where youths deliberately set out to kill another. Frequently, he believes, this has to do with an issue of perceived disrespect.

“In our culture, it is very, very crucial. The disrespect issue is very critical. If you disrespect them you can’t get away with it. It is a matter of life and death. Once there is a situation, they are going to come and look for you and deal with your case, though there is a reasonable chance it will go either way. Usually it goes the way of the aggressor and when the aggressor kills the other person there is not much in the way of remorse,” he suggests.

Bernard, like other professionals, believes that preventing children from becoming victims and perpetrators of violence comes down to ensuring that they are properly parented, and have strong bonds to their families and to society.

“Many of those children who become a part of criminal activity, it is that they have no love relationship with their family, with society, so to hell with society and its rules. They talk about it in psychology: the importance of maternal bonding,” Bernard discloses. “The mother’s sensitivity to the child’s needs is what will help the child to develop trust, trust to the mother, to the father, to the society. It really begins with the family, the sense of connection, the sense of trust.”

What is more, he says, Jamaicans need to re-examine their hostility towards children.

“We are a very aggressive people in Jamaica and we tend to traumatise our children, especially the unwanted ones. Adults in Jamaica are generally hostile toward children. If you go to school and hear the teachers talking to children and among parents as well, I can only conclude that the lower classes and lower middle classes are very hostile to children. Among the other classes, who are more educated, they are a little more careful.”

The punishment of children, he adds, is something of which parents and society in general need to take stock.

“When parents punish children, they are punishing them out of anger, so you find child-rearing practices are usually harsh and punitive. When you couple the harshness and the punitive nature of the punishment with the abandonment of these children, it is a recipe for disaster,” he insists.

Bernard suggests that the spiritual element needs to be explored, as more children are murdered and become involved in crime.

“I believe there is a spiritual side of it as well. It is just a depravity. There is no value for life. There is nothing. They are not human anymore,” he feels. “That sort of behaviour is associated with organised crime. In the Mafia: there is that level of depravity. You find that people have become cold-blooded.”

Child psychiatrist Gillian Lowe, who works at the University Hospital of the West Indies, also believes that beyond the required increased vigilance of parents in monitoring the activities of their boys and girls, there is the need for increased bonding between parents and their children. This, she notes, was especially a factor as one looks at violence and crime among children.

“Many times when you see a child with problems, that is usually a symptom of things happening in the family. The child’s misbehaviour or poor conduct is, in many cases, a symptom of some pathology of something that is happening at home,” she says, citing the research work of Dr Judith Liber to underscore the point.

Liber, in looking at the profile of conduct disorder among children attending the Bustamante Child Guidance Clinic, found that the “lone, unsupported mother” was a risk factor for conduct disorder.

Without support, the responsibility for nurturing and meeting the survival needs of the child fell to the single mother and, more often than not, the pursuit of a livelihood came at the experience of the bonding experience between mother and child or children.

Against this background, Lowe is advocating that parenting skills be taught in schools. The reality, she says, is that knowledge of parenting is not automatically acquired.