Much has been made of the relationship between the unemployed and crime. However, not enough has been said of the unemployable.

Growing up I often met men from rural poor communities who were barely literate as they had no opportunity to attend school. Bear in mind this was 30-odd years ago when free education, though existing, was not yet properly infrastructured.

There were also far less support programmes to assist individuals to access education and it only really reached those born in the 60s and later. My father explained to me that the aforementioned youth were, to a large degree, “unemployable”, although he managed to find ways to employ many of them, much to the frustration of his accountant.

I am also finding people coming to me for employment who, to a great degree, are unemployable because they are barely literate. The difference though is that they actually went to school — primary and high — and grew up in Kingston and St Catherine.

How, I wonder, can someone go through 11 years of schooling and be barely able to scratch their name?

This is the profile of the average detainee in our remand facilities. They are all barely able to read. In fact, let me drop the political correctness: dem damn dunce. Speaking with them is like having a conversation with a cabbage.

The detained are almost always guilty. There may not be witnesses who are willing to give evidence in court, because of obvious reasons, but the investigation usually results in the arrest of the correct offenders. They are also usually unable to function in society in any employment scenario. What makes them this way?

Well, less than one per cent of inmates of a jail I researched attended a traditional high school.

The inmates were divided between those who are created by the influence of family and close friends and are what I call generational criminals. Then there are those who are created by being unemployable.

This is a far too often description of the Jamaican male who turns 18 and did not attend a traditional high school.

Why does the non-traditional high school spew out this product? Because non-traditional high schools are fed 11-year-olds who can barely read and are expected to be taught a high school academic programme.

This has heralded a new crisis. We are not producing enough males with two CXC subjects or more to fill the ranks of the police force, army, security firms, call centres, colleges, universities, and emigration. This is a real issue.

I am wondering if I can get some Haitians or Mexicans to hire. Because I simply can’t put a security uniform on the tattooed, bleached-out, barely literate young males who make up 90 per cent of the applicants for a job as a security officer.

Education is free, right? We are wasting our money if this is the level of education that the lion’s share of our 18-year-old males are achieving. The intention is supposed to be the production of an educated society. That simply is not happening.

Let’s talk solutions. Short-term. We need a massive islandwide post-18-year-old education thrust to teach the bulk of young males who can barely read. We then need to channel them into jobs that they previously were unable to access, like security officers and hospital orderlies.

The training must come with some guarantees of employment or they will not attend.

This will significantly reduce a portion of human capital that is being made available to the gangs for a career in criminality. The generational criminal is a whole different story and a lot harder to intercept. We have discussed that many times before.

Now, on to the long-term solution. We need to stop fooling ourselves by judging the level of our young males by the standard of the minority, rather than the majority.

We need to find ways to ensure that everyone leaving school is at least literate, by refusing entry into high schools any student who cannot pass a functional literary test. PEP or GSAT is not a literary test. They are more like a test to remove the best quarter from the rest. Rather like culling a herd.

This will result in a shortfall of students to fill the classrooms of many non-traditional schools and will ultimately require us to change some of these non-traditional high schools into reading centres and trade training institutions.

As a young man attending Calabar High in the 80s, I liked the “idea” of being a sprinter. I trained really hard. One day Herb McKenley came to me and said “McKay, you could train all day, every day, and you will only get fitter, not faster.”

He then recommended strength events. I, unfortunately, didn’t take his advice and tried the pole vault. But that is another story. My point is that not because you have great intentions means you will have great results. Also, there is a time to accept the futility of a plan.

I don’t think any Jamaican Government realises how badly this system is working out. I’m not even sure the current one realises we have more jobs in any category that we can’t fill.

Bear in mind I am referring to individuals who failed in achieving the standard to even apply for college. We can’t even fill the basic requirements of two subjects if it’s even a non-academic area.

What in the hell have we been spending all this money for? So 20 per cent can do okay, five per cent fantastic, and the rest can only conduct the buses or break rocks.

The police force can only fight people who are already criminals. The prisons can only imprison the convicted. The failure of education ensures that the above two individals will be perpetually employed.

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