Some time ago I arrested a young man in my police area. He had been wanted for a violent offence in a neighbouring parish. His rap sheet was that of a career criminal.

He was charged a number of times before finally being convicted for a gun offence and was now wanted for a violent, gun-related crime since being released.

That was the Jamaican crime loop prior to the new anti-gang Bill, the residual effects which still haunt us.

During the post-arrest interview the young man was unable to give me his date of birth. I asked why and he said he was never told and did not know anyone who could tell him. After some probing I was convinced he was telling the truth.

So, as I looked at this young man, who is younger than my youngest child and who is, without a doubt, beyond any hope of rehabilitation, I wondered what my sons would have become had they been subjected to this degree of neglect.

For myself, I can guarantee you that if I were treated similarly as a child, I would definitely have become a criminal.

Can you imagine being so unimportant to everyone that not even your date of birth can be ascertained?

I took off my police hat and put on my social scientist shoes. So I probed. Who raised you? Were you ever registered? Did you ever attend a school?

My probe uncovered that this man was raised by what I will call ‘the gang family’. You see, there is that criminal who is moulded by his own family, which includes members who are criminal elements. Then there are those children who have no family to care for them and they end up being raised by gangs.

Their roles will vary from lookout man to courier of guns, until eventually they become the killers.

When raised without any form of treatment that is in keeping with traditional family practices they tend to be harder and colder in the practice of violent behaviour.

The gangs, although taking the place of a traditional family, have no genuine intentions. Their purpose is to use and manipulate. This resulting killer, unlike the killer created by family indoctrination, is preventable by State intervention.

That brings me to my primary issue. In over two decades of policing I have never felt the presence of social workers in the inner-city communities I police. There does not seem to be a system where social workers are micro-assigned to small communities, but there should be.

Communities like Christian Pen should have a team that is assigned to them specifically. This should be the case for every small neighbourhood where poverty and gangs are present and are active influencers.

I have seen murder victims’ children run wild and be raised by the streets and later be prosecuted as adult criminals.

Efforts were made by social services to capture and remove them but it was by social workers who were supervising large areas, not specifically southern Gregory Park. Hence, they failed.

We need a more focused approach by the social services that mirrors how political parties manage voting clusters. A good place to start would be ‘Gulf’ in Gregory Park. That is a wood and zinc enclave devoid of social infrastructure and is a breeding ground for gunmen financed by an America-based criminal.

As children are identified as parentless, truant, and most importantly not under the control of any adult, the State should intervene. This doesn’t occur because the communities are not micro-managed. The area of responsibility is too large.

What I am speaking of may sound like a significant effort that would come at a great price.

However, the price is even greater when the gang-raised child is costing the State in funerals and hospital stays when he starts doing his shooting as a teenager.

Then there is the price for the State to hunt him, prosecute him, and then house him for 10 years at a time. It’s all about where you want to spend the money on him
— as a child to save him or as an adult to destroy him.

State removal of juveniles in Jamaica is somewhat restrictive. Have you ever wondered why we have so many children in children’s homes but no children available for adoption?

This is because the ability to deprive a parent of their right to custody is a very high bar. So you have all these children either being neglected or languishing in children’s homes while there are people willing to adopt but can’t because the parent must give permission for the adoption.

The future of crime-fighting will have to be complemented by State intervention through social services and this has to be a micro-managed process. Frankly, the forced removal of children from communities needs to become a common practice.

The process of moulding the killer in a Jamaican slum begins at about age three and is complete by age 14. Special attention needs to be paid to gang families and unwanted children being raised by the streets.

I’m not knocking the efforts of our social workers, as they do what they can with what they have. It’s not their intent that is the problem. The problem is that there is no strategy in place to attack our problem in that manner.

Unlike our crime strategies that are carefully planned by our Government and our police force and treated as priority, there is no similar approach for micro-managing the factors that create killers generation after generation.

It’s assumed that it’s a poverty issue. But rural communities are poorer and less violent.

The inner-cities create a playing field for gang growth but the families or their absence provide the players.

The long-term plan for change will need a social service budget that mirrors the national security budget. Without that, it will only be a short-term plan.

Feedback: drjasonamckay@gmail.com