According to a recent study, “Young Jamaican males face intersecting risks, including high rates of violence exposure, gang recruitment, academic underachievement, and limited economic opportunities. Addressing these challenges requires targeted interventions in education, mentorship, and justice diversion to help them build stable, productive futures.”

But, alas, successive Jamaican governments as well as non-governmental advocates have failed to tackle successfully any of these underlying issues that have, regrettably, led to a dysfunctional society.

In this vein, one of the tragedies of today’s Jamaica is that so many male youngsters are not being allowed to enjoy their childhood. They are being forced into adulthood mentally, physically, and even sexually. It is no secret that the absence of fathers in many of our homes has led to much deviance, truancy, and juvenile delinquency. As a result, boys have turned to crime, in its many forms, in order to eke out an existence or to be accepted and revered in an environment in which badness appears to pay good dividends.

Too many of our boys grow up without any fatherly love in their miserable lives. In a society that is extremely homophobic, our men are afraid to be their son’s best friends and hug their sons and tell them that they love them because that may make them look “funny”. As a result, many of our boys grow up without any fatherly love, and this is why so many of them are heartless and will “make a duppy” (kill someone) without batting an eyelid or having any sense of remorse.

In a homophobic society, our men are afraid to hug their sons and tell them that they love them.

Indeed, many of them do not expect to live past 25 years old, so they live fast and die young. In fact, the police will tell you that some of the most evil and cold-blooded killers in the Jamaican society are male youngsters. Immediate gratification is the order of the day. In essence, for many of our male youngsters, it is death at an early age. And what is more frightening is that I am not just referring here to physical death, but death of the soul and the spirit.

A cynic once referred to a dead atheist, as he laid in his coffin, as someone who was all dressed up with no place to go. As morbid as it may sound, this may well be an apt description for so many of our young males. Tragically, of the hundreds of “alleged” criminals killed by the police in “alleged” armed conflicts, the vast majority are young Jamaican males. Indeed, statistics have shown that over 60 per cent of young males 13-24 experience physical violence in their lifetime, with many witnessing gang activity and domestic abuse in their communities.

In the meantime, too few of them will obtain gainful employment, while others will have tremendous difficulty finding the necessary funds to go on to further studies or training. One such graduate told me that he had already decided to either take up the gun or get into the sweepstakes business (lotto scamming). He has both Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) and advanced level subjects and hopes to be a lawyer one day, but will he make it? Then there are those who choose hustling as a way of life or opt “to run off” illegally to the United States or another foreign destination.

Yes, there are numerous such cases out there, and I am appealing to those people who are in a position to mentor an unfortunate male youngster to do so. If each of us can save even one such young Jamaican male from descending into the abyss, we will have made a difference.

Majority of murders are committed by youngsters between 15 and 25.

The sad truth is that our generation has failed this upcoming generation in more ways than one, yet we condemn them as being a generation of vipers. There have been too many studies, task forces, research papers, public education programmes, and other such exercises in futility done in the name of “social intervention”, which, in many instances, only so-called consultants, experts, and party hacks benefit from by way of financial remuneration, while “Jah kingdom goes to waste”.

And it is not only our politicians who are to be blamed for the many ills that plague this country’s young males. What of our dancehall artistes whose lifestyle, lyrics, and utterances have a lasting effect on our young minds? I once asked a young man during a job interview if he read the newspapers or listened to the news on radio or watched it on television, and his crisp response was, “No, sah, mi lissen to Bounty Killa and Beenie Man!” When are we going to rope in our performing artistes and impress on them the vitally important role they can play in influencing especially our male youngsters to follow the right path to success and become useful and happy citizens?

It cannot be business as usual if we seriously want to save this country from becoming a banana republic in which the rule of law becomes a sick joke and crime and violence take precedence. Unfortunately, we have been spending too much time on what I consider trivialities and sideshows while the society deteriorates into anarchy. In other words, we continue to fiddle while Rome burns.

As far back as 2009, our current Minister of National Security and Peace Dr Horace Chang made the appeal for more successful Jamaicans to become mentors for the country’s young people, especially the males. According to the good doctor, a large number of Jamaican males grow up in single-mother households, and some of them drop out of school before grade nine and are at risk of becoming involved in crime, noting that about 90 per cent of homicides were committed by youngsters between 15 and 25.

Fast-forward to the present and the scenario has basically remained the same despite the commendable decrease in the murder statistics. It is also to be noted that most victims of motor vehicle crashes, including motorcycles, are young men. And what is becoming even more frightening is that many young men are now dying from non-communicable diseases because of a reckless lifestyle, consuming large amounts of alcohol, smoking cigarettes and weed (ganja), just basically adhering to the tenet “Live fast and die young!”

Whether we want to accept this harsh reality or not, it is safe to say that the country is facing a national crisis with respect to its young males, even while there is an alarming decline in Jamaica’s population. Finally, for those who may prefer to play down this frightening trend, this writer would like to invite them to attend some of the upcoming graduation exercises from the secondary to the tertiary level and observe the percentage of young females graduating as against that of the young males.

The young Jamaican male is indeed an endangered species!

Lloyd B Smith has been involved full-time in Jamaican media for the 50 years. He has also served as a People’s National Party Member of Parliament and Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives. He hails from western Jamaica where he is popularly known as the Governor. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or lbsmith4@gmail.com.