IN three years, 44-year-old Dwayne Nelson has seen more men with regrets as a chaplain in the Department of Correctional Services than most people twice his age will see in their lifetime.

So when student-on-student violence surged in Jamaica following the resumption of face-to-face learning at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, he sprang into action, determined to be a human barrier between as many youth as possible and the prison system.

“I call the initiative Generational Impact, and what it aims to do is to deter youth from a life of crime and violence and inspire them to unlock the latent greatness within them,” Nelson, an ordained minister with the United Pentecostal Church of Jamaica, a justice of the peace, as well as an educator and counsellor, told the Jamaica Observer during a recent interview.

“I go into the schools with a tag line, ‘Stop, Think, Then Act’, to help the youth reconstruct how they think based on the atrocities that we have been hearing of taking place in schools — the maladaptive behaviours. So we try to help them reconstruct how they think [so] that they start to think strategically, have better thought patterns, and inspire them to bring out a mindset to achieve greatness,” Nelson, a husband and father of two daughters and two sons, said.

In explaining the sense of urgency which galvanised him to act after violent incidents in schools made headlines, Nelson said his job counselling inmates and conducting life skills sessions within the correctional services helps drive the message home.

“Working within the correctional services and seeing where persons can end up caused me to think about how it is we can break the cycle of crime to help these youngsters, and the thought came to me that this could be done by reaching the next generation. So it’s from there I set out to get into the schools, especially the schools that are deemed low performing. So I target those schools to see if we can help them, realising also that there is dysfunction in families, lack of parental guidance — the whole association with negative influence contributes to their behaviour,” he said.

Nelson, who has been working with five schools in the Corporate Area, backed by a resource team of professionals, said from the initiative he has developed a comprehensive behaviour modification programme.

“There are about eight known criminogenic needs, [which are factors in a person’s life — like substance abuse, antisocial attitudes, criminal friends, or lack of education/employment — that directly increase their risk of committing crimes and reoffending]. What I have done is develop a programme that addresses those needs within the students. So [we] look at substance abuse and we bring in various professionals that would address those kinds of needs. We bring in also ex-inmates who give them live experience to try and deter them, to show them that prison life is not sweet, it’s not a bed of roses and they should not go there,” he shared.

The trained counsellor, who is currently pursuing his PhD in educational leadership and management, said he has also introduced the board game chess to programme participants in trying to cover all the bases.

“Most recently we developed a chess programme because we have learnt that chess is more than just a game, it is like a mental strategic exercise that enhances emotional regulation and it helps to improve academic performance. If we do it in a structured way, it provides support to the cognitive, the emotional, social, and behavioural growth, especially amongst youth. Research shows that chess helps to develop student’s personality and character and helps to build self-confidence,” he pointed out.

Confidence, Nelson said, is the missing plank in the lives of many children who misbehave — a quality he tries desperately to instil. The ultimate aim, he told the Sunday Observer, is to see the programme become a part of the arsenal of offerings from the primary to secondary level.

“The vision is we see if we can get this programme within the curriculum, because it is a structured, targeted intervention programme. If we could get it from the primary to secondary [school], it would build a platform: people with positive thinking, high self-esteem, know how to control themselves, and see themselves as worthwhile because some students have very low self-esteem,” he said.

“The programme messaging is delivered in such a way as to inspire positive self-esteem to say, ‘You are worth something and inside you lies greatness, so you don’t have to associate yourself with negative elements to feel a sense of belonging,’ ” Nelson added.

Using time allotted for leave and even weekends, while balancing family life and ministry responsibilities, Nelson, who funds the programme from his own pockets, is unswerving in his determination to help future generations “unlock their greatness and become who they were designed to become and contribute to society by breaking the cycle of crime.

“In my job I get to see how [inmates] feel — the sense of remorse — you get to see all of that where there is no more freedom, so gathering all those experiences it gives you the edge to go out there in the public and, especially within the schools, and say, “Hey, you don’t want to go there, Make a U-turn and go on the right path, because if you continue on that trajectory you are going to be in a place where you wish you didn’t make that choice,” he said.