CHARLESTOWN, Nevis - MEMBER of the Nevis Anti-crime Initiative and former criminal lawyer Dan Mac Mullin is equipping students with life skills that should keep them out of gangs if his efforts are complimented by stakeholders.
Mac Mullin’s efforts are part of a series of activities that make up his Anti-gang Course which is being piloted in Nevis.
His latest venture was a lecture on Tuesday at the St. Thomas Primary School during which he updated students on the crime situation in the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis.
He said the majority of murders in the Federation have been gang-related.
Mac Mullin said gangs could be likened to modern day slavery since they trap members who get hooked and cannot leave. He said gangs unleash violence on the public.
“As the members fight among themselves, their fighting distracts society.”
The members of gangs, he said, commit crimes, perpetuate self-hate, sell, buy and use drugs.
He told the children that gang members use painful branding and tattoo processes. He likened this to the slave owners who would use a hot iron to place a mark of ownership onto the slaves. He told the children that joining a gang means making oneself a self-made slave.
Mac Mullin is using unique approaches to get the urgent message across. He told the children of a girl who was a gang member, noting she was injecting herself with drugs on her toes, and knees…everywhere. At the time he met her, she was also pregnant. “Drugs enslaved her. She no longer cared for herself or her baby,” he added.
Another great damage Mac Mullin highlighted that gang members could unleash, is that of abuse of women. The lawyer said when a man abuses a woman he does it because he believes he owns her. Addressing the female students, he said, “As women you deserve to be respected. All of us owe our existence to women.” He said it was not possible for any human being to own another.
Also highlighted was the fact that gang members often neglect their children. The members are no longer allowed to be involved in the lives of their children. Often they end up being behind bars and “committing a crime is giving yourself up to slavery”.
The former criminal lawyer, who has lived with his family on Nevis for nine years, told the students that not long ago one could have slept with doors open but now it is not safe to leave doors open even in the daytime.
Mac Mullin told the students that as a result of representing criminals in his home country, Canada, he has great knowledge of the insides of criminals. He often represented gang members in court and found out that gangs have to steal to pay the legal fees.
Mac Mullin told the children of Tookie Williams of Los Angeles, California, who founded the Crips, but later looked into his life while serving a death sentence and wrote an apology.
Mac Mullin is convinced that when the children gain life skills that would enable them to say no to gangs and crime, they would also pass on those messages to the society. “The message is stronger than the messenger,” he said.
One student, Vincent Cornelius, said he learnt from the lecture that a gang environment is like that of a jungle. “You get entangled and you cannot get out,” he said.
“I also learnt being in a gang is like being behind bars, it is like hell.”
He was so impacted that he could not wait to get home to impart the knowledge to his brothers and sisters.
Hakim Harvey learnt that gangs are dangerous and that should a young person get caught up in gangs, they cannot easily escape. Michelle Clarke learnt that being in a gang is like being in slavery.
