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Dealing with the crime monster
Mark Wignall
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Make a visit to any small town, country village, urban inner-city setting, or one of those informal settlements hanging on the edge of uptown suburbia and you will see them. Little groups of young men chatting, seemingly idle, smoking ganja, defiant one minute, then discussing a "hustling" the next.
They are anywhere between 17 to 30 years old, and although it is rare to find a group of, say, four or five without at least one having a "trade", it is the norm that if even one has a salaried job (it's his day-off), that is, he works at a particular place five or six days for the week, he is the real rarity.
One may be a plumber, another a "sometimes mechanic" and yet another will tell you about his exploits on a large construction site years ago when he made "good hustling" pouring concrete. The common thread among them is lack of education and training. Most are only half-trained in what they do, having suffered apprenticeship as punishment.
Years ago, one may have wandered into a "garage", that is, a workshop, where he was tossed and hauled about as a "hol-ya", that is a "go-fer" until in a year or so he convinced himself that he had earned himself the title "mechanic".
In the urban inner-city settings, it is not far from the norm that the young man who is a welder and who gets work regularly enough to set up a little room with a TV and audio set also has a gun stashed away. By no stretch of the imagination could he be classified as a gunman, that is, one who will run with a small pack of men, holding up a store or on his own, robbing an elderly person leaving an ATM.
From my vantage point, the gun has become so embedded in the psyche of the urban inner-city youngster that it has transcended its use as a survival tool in the ghetto. At one level, there is the young man driven by a lifetime of parental physical and mental abuse, poor education and peer pressure into believing that the easiest way of acquiring funds, creature comforts and "respect" is to push the wrong end of a gun against the side of another human being's head and say, "Bway, yuh want a shot inna yuh 'ead."
In short time that youngster always has a date with a policeman's bullet or another gunman. He is predictable, dangerously so, but his line on the graph shows him making no further contribution after age 24.
I have met many young men out of the inner-city settings who are as "responsible"as any law-abiding citizen anywhere in Jamaica. He wants a house, a car, female companionship and he wants the best for his children. The problem is, over the years the gun, as respect and self-esteem, has so worked its way into the heart and soul of ghetto living that it has become a signature possession like a US$1500 digital camera to an uptown, white-collar worker or businessman.
About a week ago while the police in Montego Bay were into the usual process of scooping up young men from one of the many inner-city "informal settlements" precariously perched on the edge of the island's premier resort city, MP for the area and new minister of water and housing Dr Horace Chang said on radio that about 90 per cent of youngsters in Montego Bay leave school in 9th grade (third form).
The implications of that for the here-and-now and for the next generation are frightening - high levels of functional illiteracy, poor numeracy skills and, having regard to the gun culture at street level, a block in assimilating "new" ideas of what a society ought to be. How does one communicate ideas of civility to a 23-year-old young man who left school at 14/15, can barely read, write or add fractions while seeing the gun and "un-civility" work for those fully into badness?
In this information technology age, how does one train thousands of youngsters whose brain function (for basic school lessons) seemed to have stopped at 15 while the street influence took over after that? If hustling in coke or dabbling in lottery scams earned a few big bucks ($30,000 per day), how do we now convince these young men that a better life exists getting trained and earning $5000 per week?
It is for that very reason why the lottery scam in MoBay is still very much alive. While the police are in Montego Bay staking out places where overseas money is collected, the boys are going as far as mid-island and east to collect from those gullible people sending US$800 to US$1000 to facilitate them collecting millions which do not exist.
In another year when the crime gurus at the highest level in the police begin to add up the numbers murdered, the new JLP government will be facing one of its biggest hurdles. What will it do about the guns firing and those stashed? Certainly, the method used by the police to "clear up" murders is outdated. What is needed is more professionalism in the detective corps of the JCF.
Has the government considered a gun amnesty? Not as a solution, but in an effort to bring about a much more meaningful impact on the murder rate. Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore did not go for the big "Values and Attitudes" sort of campaign. That is just too much "feel good" socio-political tomfoolery.
He targeted things one at a time. For a period of, say, six months there would be a campaign for "no spitting" on the roads. Then there would be another campaign concentrated on taxi drivers using their meters. In our case we have allowed too much to slip and the avalanche is upon us now.
As the young men sit and watch affluence driving by them, they roll a spliff and consider just what it is they must do to drive such a shiny, new car. Unfortunately, very few, if any of them, possess the skills needed to be employed in any high-paying job. And, in this the age where all things are communicated in the blink of an eye, they know that they are not prepared to work for $4000 to $5000 per week with employer abuse thrown in for "good" measure.
Many are not prepared to use their guns, but guess what? They still have them.
observemark@gmail.com
Mark Wignall
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Make a visit to any small town, country village, urban inner-city setting, or one of those informal settlements hanging on the edge of uptown suburbia and you will see them. Little groups of young men chatting, seemingly idle, smoking ganja, defiant one minute, then discussing a "hustling" the next.
They are anywhere between 17 to 30 years old, and although it is rare to find a group of, say, four or five without at least one having a "trade", it is the norm that if even one has a salaried job (it's his day-off), that is, he works at a particular place five or six days for the week, he is the real rarity.
One may be a plumber, another a "sometimes mechanic" and yet another will tell you about his exploits on a large construction site years ago when he made "good hustling" pouring concrete. The common thread among them is lack of education and training. Most are only half-trained in what they do, having suffered apprenticeship as punishment.
Years ago, one may have wandered into a "garage", that is, a workshop, where he was tossed and hauled about as a "hol-ya", that is a "go-fer" until in a year or so he convinced himself that he had earned himself the title "mechanic".
In the urban inner-city settings, it is not far from the norm that the young man who is a welder and who gets work regularly enough to set up a little room with a TV and audio set also has a gun stashed away. By no stretch of the imagination could he be classified as a gunman, that is, one who will run with a small pack of men, holding up a store or on his own, robbing an elderly person leaving an ATM.
From my vantage point, the gun has become so embedded in the psyche of the urban inner-city youngster that it has transcended its use as a survival tool in the ghetto. At one level, there is the young man driven by a lifetime of parental physical and mental abuse, poor education and peer pressure into believing that the easiest way of acquiring funds, creature comforts and "respect" is to push the wrong end of a gun against the side of another human being's head and say, "Bway, yuh want a shot inna yuh 'ead."
In short time that youngster always has a date with a policeman's bullet or another gunman. He is predictable, dangerously so, but his line on the graph shows him making no further contribution after age 24.
I have met many young men out of the inner-city settings who are as "responsible"as any law-abiding citizen anywhere in Jamaica. He wants a house, a car, female companionship and he wants the best for his children. The problem is, over the years the gun, as respect and self-esteem, has so worked its way into the heart and soul of ghetto living that it has become a signature possession like a US$1500 digital camera to an uptown, white-collar worker or businessman.
About a week ago while the police in Montego Bay were into the usual process of scooping up young men from one of the many inner-city "informal settlements" precariously perched on the edge of the island's premier resort city, MP for the area and new minister of water and housing Dr Horace Chang said on radio that about 90 per cent of youngsters in Montego Bay leave school in 9th grade (third form).
The implications of that for the here-and-now and for the next generation are frightening - high levels of functional illiteracy, poor numeracy skills and, having regard to the gun culture at street level, a block in assimilating "new" ideas of what a society ought to be. How does one communicate ideas of civility to a 23-year-old young man who left school at 14/15, can barely read, write or add fractions while seeing the gun and "un-civility" work for those fully into badness?
In this information technology age, how does one train thousands of youngsters whose brain function (for basic school lessons) seemed to have stopped at 15 while the street influence took over after that? If hustling in coke or dabbling in lottery scams earned a few big bucks ($30,000 per day), how do we now convince these young men that a better life exists getting trained and earning $5000 per week?
It is for that very reason why the lottery scam in MoBay is still very much alive. While the police are in Montego Bay staking out places where overseas money is collected, the boys are going as far as mid-island and east to collect from those gullible people sending US$800 to US$1000 to facilitate them collecting millions which do not exist.
In another year when the crime gurus at the highest level in the police begin to add up the numbers murdered, the new JLP government will be facing one of its biggest hurdles. What will it do about the guns firing and those stashed? Certainly, the method used by the police to "clear up" murders is outdated. What is needed is more professionalism in the detective corps of the JCF.
Has the government considered a gun amnesty? Not as a solution, but in an effort to bring about a much more meaningful impact on the murder rate. Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore did not go for the big "Values and Attitudes" sort of campaign. That is just too much "feel good" socio-political tomfoolery.
He targeted things one at a time. For a period of, say, six months there would be a campaign for "no spitting" on the roads. Then there would be another campaign concentrated on taxi drivers using their meters. In our case we have allowed too much to slip and the avalanche is upon us now.
As the young men sit and watch affluence driving by them, they roll a spliff and consider just what it is they must do to drive such a shiny, new car. Unfortunately, very few, if any of them, possess the skills needed to be employed in any high-paying job. And, in this the age where all things are communicated in the blink of an eye, they know that they are not prepared to work for $4000 to $5000 per week with employer abuse thrown in for "good" measure.
Many are not prepared to use their guns, but guess what? They still have them.
observemark@gmail.com
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