By Stephen Walwyn

Chairperson of NCAI (Nevis Community Anti-Crime Initiative)

How do we as a society properly address the problems of gang culture and an increase in guns and violence? How do we successfully reach our increasingly disengaged boys? We must do so by first doing an honest assessment of where we are and how did we get here in such a dizzyingly short time. It was only three years ago and prior when the murder rate was significantly lower for the year (in Nevis, up to 2006, there were only 1-2 murders for the year; last year, the number was 5). Last year in the Federation it was 23. It is only April; we’ve already experienced 9, 8 of which are apparently gang related. To address the problems that our young people are apparently having with us, we need to profile them, the families in which they have been raised, as well as the communities in which those families have been raised.

Instead of speaking down to them, I would like to attempt to do this evaluation through the eyes of these troubled youths, largely males, and presume to speak for them…at least in this two-part article. A third article, in this three-part series, recommends what the fix must be if we are to take back control of our families, communities and our society at large. 

Much has been written on the link between dysfunctional families and at risk youth who get themselves in trouble with the law, drop out of school and who live their lives on the edge of self-destructive and delinquent lifestyles. Dysfunctional families are those in which there is much more conflict and feelings of frustrations than there are feelings of satisfaction, well-being and structure. The research and findings on family life have established very strong connections between children who drop out of school and lead a life of drugs, violence and crime, and families in which parents abuse drugs, neglect or abuse children, experience long periods of unemployment, fathers are both missing and unsupportive and children don’t receive consistent love combined with firm and consistent discipline. So much has been studied and written on this topic that I am not sure how much the issue is helped by further commentary…except of course to remind service providers, funding sources and governments of the urgent attention to put DESPERATELY needed resources to assist and support these families. In point of fact in the March 6 Edition of The Observer, the Ministry of Social Development, Community and Gender Affairs’ Counselling Center, authored by Jeweleen Manners-Woodley, an article was written, nicely showing how risk factors such as school, family and personal as well as community, significantly contribute to the negative outcomes of the self-destructive lifestyles of drugs, guns, violence, crime and especially gang memberships among our young males.

What has NOT been spoken about very much however are the dynamics and profile of the society and communities in which these troubled families with at risk youth, exist and function.  Purely from the perspective of the most at risk of the at-risk youths, what would they say about our society in St. Kitts and Nevis? Would they conclude that our society in the Federation is dysfunctional and troubled, similar to the dynamics at home in their families? Would they for example see difficulty with the excessive material and money focus of much of our citizens, while everyone decries their desire to live the “good life”? Would they appreciate the loss in our traditional values, once focused on family and community and a society that once placed a much higher premium on the individual life than on one’s ability to earn money, wield political and societal influence and the social status that he/she holds? What goes through their minds when they see the way in which we treat our elders, i.e. the older folks in our community with poor and “throw aside” regard, much, much different from the central and special place they once held in our society, particularly in respect of their role in guiding our young? What do they think when they realise that we are a highly churched community compared to most, but we have turned our churches into whipping posts and boiling pots of condemnation and exclusion, placing the letter of the Bible and church policy over the spirit of the Word, contrition, forgiveness and unconditional regard and acceptance. This then in the minds of our young leaves the most vulnerable to the worse kind of hypocrisy and self-righteousness known to mankind. When faced with a choice over showing compassion, discretion and a community minded caring, we almost always choose instead gossip, slander, back-biting and back-stabbing. Some of this they would have experienced at home, seen in the church but also witnessed in the community at large.

Could it be that our youngsters have observed that our communities don’t generally provide support to the weak among us, i.e. those who are spiritually, financially, socially or mentally/emotionally weak and most vulnerable? And as a people, we seem to get perverse satisfaction and even pleasure to see each other fall or hurt in any way? Might they notice that the least chance we get we exploit those from outside who have financial means as well as those from inside? And that those who are a part of our national family, who live in other countries, we exclude and marginalise? If we can exploit or use them we do and if not then we have no use for them? It doesn’t seem to matter whether or not they move back home or they stay where they are. Is it possible that our young have taken note of the fact that those who visit us and become part of us from outside we look upon with contempt and scorn…sometimes even plain, raw old racial hatred, as if they are not paying our bills, cleaning our yards and houses, managing some of our recently developed institutions, teaching our youngsters, and the list goes on almost without exceptions?  

It may very well be that this only applies to the keenest among our young and those who have not yet turned away from us, but could it be that…it has not been lost on them that: there is a massive and sometimes even deadly lack of trust and consequently, poor communication between institutions, political parties, individuals in our society, and family members? That getting things done and being constructive can be a monumental exercise, if not altogether unlikely? Could they have taken note of the fact that committees, groups and partnerships are easy casualties in this loss of confidence between entities? And this to such an extent that meetings of any kind lack the integrity and the confidentiality that they need in order to achieve some of the important objectives undertaken? That secrets are not kept, or confidences maintained, particularly for very sensitive matters that require the greatest of effort at discretion, in a community that is very closed and guarded but in which secrecy is a hostile intruder? Our young may or may not have noticed that the work of the group is always left to the leader as fear of the larger society, cynicism, sometimes even the need for sabotage and selfish concern over who gets the credit, and general indifference, kick in. By extension, we as a society sit back and leave everything to our leaders to tackle and solve, leaving our role to bad-mouthing, criticising or sitting back and waiting to see it not work.

As a result of these dynamics as well as the relative size of our society, entrenched loyalties and loyalties of convenience are the order of the day. Not surprisingly, conflicts of interest and corruption abound in and out of government. A legal and moral infrastructure that should protect the community against these forces are either absent or lacking the will, courage and fortitude to do anything about them.

When parents settle disputes at home in a fair and balanced way, young people learn to trust the world and see it as fair. One child or another should never always get the right for example, since no child is never always right. Parents are the link to the bigger world outside of the family.  Parents in our community are the guardians of our legacy, the bulwarks against the onslaught to our values and cultural traditions; they are the Nation’s barometer of the economic, social and cultural shifts… (I dare say seismic changes), that have taken place over the past twenty or so years. Parents are overwhelmed, confused, under-resourced and woefully ill-prepared for the many serious challenges with which they have been faced over the last two decades. Regrettably, they were fast asleep on the job when the explosion of cable television brought in wholesale the refuse of failed so called first world countries. Should it surprise us that the names of the gangs include “Bloods” and “Cryps”, an extract from big cities in the United States, originating in Los Angeles, California? When the wave of economic opportunity and prosperity came to our shores through the shift from our simple agricultural and agrarian way of life to an economy wholly dependent on the lure of financial services and sun, sea and sand tourism, nobody bothered to inform parents of what they would sacrifice to go dine at the table. 

They went to work for very long hours while leaving the job of parenting to the television, the house and someone else. Or, they were not listening to those who did sound the warning. 

Perhaps they made a conscious and deliberate choice, fully informed on what was at stake, to choose the quick fixes of a hamburger and milkshake fill, over the virtues of a diet that consisted of raw grain and fruit in terms of their attention to and discipline of their children. They made a second fatal mistake: they over-indulged their children on the “good life”, relaxed the rules (or removed them altogether), changed their expectations and stopped requiring so much of them by way of good manners, respect for authority (and elders) and strict obedience to their orders.

The rest of the community, i.e. those of us without the direct task of parenting, collectively ingested the slow poison of denial. Instead of seeing the problems in our community as our own and hitting us head on, we chose to blame them on the other political party. We blamed the problems on those who just won’t properly look after THEIR children. And we blamed the problems on those few bad eggs who just need a good dose of stronger policing, tougher sentences, and more hangings to straighten them out.

Families do not exist in isolation; they exist and function in the context of a larger community.  When children grow up in families in which they have to struggle through unemployment of parents, abuse and neglect by their parents and others, unresolved conflict and poor parenting skills along with a host of other dysfunctional patterns, those youngsters become at risk for dropping out of school before graduation, joining gangs, engaging in violence and other self-destructive behaviours. The society at large is the larger family in which these youngsters then act out their aggression, rage and many unresolved issues. While their anger may be directed at a rival gang member, the victim is not the person that their REAL anger is against at all. The rage is really against some member of their immediate biological family. Moreover, once caught up with the very risky, dangerous and fast world of their adopted family known as a gang, they use the gang and the streets as a vehicle to act out much of their frustrations, rebellion and hidden pain – hidden even from themselves. There is very good reason why the East African Proverb insists that “it takes a village to raise a child”, because it actually does. 

The next article will continue the honest assessment of the context of family and community in which our youngsters, who are joining gangs and engaging in other anti-social behaviours, exist and function. A third edition will suggest and recommend ways that the problems with our young people should be addressed.