I arrested a young man once in a section of Central Village called ‘China Town’. The arrest was related to him collecting extortion from the taxi operators at the China Town taxi stand.

The arrest resulted in the search of his home, which revealed the most emaciated mammal I had ever seen walking nearby. It was a young puppy who was so hungry she was eating ash from a fire heap.

I always believe that if God puts a crisis in front of you he intends you to fix it. So I took the dog and found her a home. She cleaned up real well.

The extortionist, however, was a more difficult fix. He was a young man, not yet 20, who had a difficult past. His father died, he was raised in a children’s home and eventually taken from the home by his grandfather, who then died.

Someone like this is cannon fodder for the gangs. He is, in essence, a victim of circumstance. That being said, I offered him a job on a site as a labourer, which is all he qualifies for and he never turned up.

The HEART Institute will train him free of cost. He won’t attend. The reality is that this man, who has had an unfortunate life that has contributed to his being the deviant he now is, can earn more threatening the lives of working people than he can wielding a sledge hammer.

There is no moral compass that will chip in. He wasn’t taught those values, or maybe has chosen to reject them. I asked him: “Why do you think that taxi men who have to buy or rent their cars and drive up and down all day to earn a ‘bread’ should pay you for doing nothing other than ‘tuff up yu face’?”

He replied: “But dem a mek money.”

So in this man’s contorted logic, the fact that the men who labour every day are earning a dollar he is entitled to some of it. A job can’t help this man because it can’t compare with the lack of actual limited labour that goes into collecting extortion vs a real job.

The same goes for scammers. There is no way to create a society that pays an income comparable to scamming and extortion for that degree of limited effort. So there is not a lot on the creation of jobs platform that the Government can do to assist.

This man is, as I said, a victim of his circumstances, because he was not raised in the stable environment that is expected of most humans. Many, however, have come from government homes and have not decided to become parasites. Many made much of themselves.

The State’s first priority has to be that you don’t become a victim of him. Although, as a social scientist, I see where his creation is a failure of a few levels of societal structure. Character is formed by myriad factors, including the influences you experience in your personal and small spaces.

Although the State must ensure that children’s human rights to education and nutrition are not in any way violated, there is an expectation that your family provides you with the parenting to create your character. When external forces are then introduced in the absence of family the process can be impacted. So somewhere in there the family, maybe even the State, has failed him.

So what now? He is a threat to society. He is not like the aforementioned puppy that can just be fed or relocated. He is, based on historical precedent, almost certain to be in prison or dead before his 25th birthday. He is already a criminal and a member of a gang, although we couldn’t charge him because of the mountain of evidence required to mount that type of case.

The men who are mirrors of this man number in the thousands. They don’t believe in being paid for the job they do or the qualifications they have studied for. They don’t believe in being paid to satisfy their needs. They believe they should earn based on their wants!

They are willing to take what others have. They are willing to kill you for what you have. Relocating them to prison the same way I relocated the puppy will not do anything to alter their character. They will just come out meaner.

So what is the solution to deal with the criminals already created? You won’t like the answer. The only solution is sentences that end with their youth. We have to ensure that once the long arm of the law gets them in their grasp, we don’t let go. This goes against the principle of our current penal system. Our penitentiaries are now called “rehabilitation” centres. We have developed probation and parole programmes that release prisoners back to society to complete their sentences. It’s not going to work. They are not going to come out better. They are in fact going to come out worse.

As a social scientist I feel the pain of our leaders to admit that there is no social solution post the creation of a criminal. So the effort to effect change must be proactive. It begins in the home. Families, not communities, create gangsters. The community just provides the playground for it to develop.

So if that young extortionist was a child, not a grown man, and you were to move him to another country without gangs or garrisons this story could have ended differently.

And his story is replicated with basic differences everyday.

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