Open let­ter to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er: Sin­gle moth­ers ap­peal for help from you be­cause sin­gle moth­ers of­ten need help.They are usu­al­ly young, un­e­d­u­cat­ed and lack­ing in work­ing skills. They are the vic­tims of a cul­ture which pro­motes women pri­mar­i­ly as sex ob­jects. They usu­al­ly come from a low-in­come sub­cul­ture where com­mon-law re­la­tion­ships are the norm, and hav­ing a male provider is a ne­ces­si­ty. Sin­gle moth­ers im­ply the ab­sence of fa­thers. It is an un­for­tu­nate prac­tice of many Afro-Tri­ni and African-Amer­i­can fa­thers to en­gage in se­r­i­al monogamy, ei­ther be­cause they are un­able to sup­port their fam­i­lies or are un­able to have a hap­py do­mes­tic re­la­tion­ship. With­out the lov­ing care of a fa­ther mod­el­ling the way boys should be­have, such boys in­evitably car­ry with them the trau­ma of fa­ther-aban­don­ment, and work out their in­ner stress­es in dys­func­tion­al re­la­tion­ships and de­viant be­hav­iour.

It is these ir­re­spon­si­ble and im­ma­ture fa­thers to blame, not the sin­gle moth­ers. Your com­ment im­ply­ing that sin­gle moth­ers are the "cause" of our crime wave is there­fore both sex­ist and wrong. Our cul­ture em­pha­sis­es con­trol and vi­o­lence in all its forms. As you have said on a pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sion when speak­ing to the po­lice, "those who don't hear will feel"-a clear ref­er­ence to for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs. Ramesh De­osaran, when a prac­tis­ing crim­i­nol­o­gist, ad­vo­cat­ed the beat­ing of stu­dents to dis­ci­pline them; a head teacher stuffed a stu­dent's head in a toi­let bowl to teach him a les­son; a young boy was made to stand in the hot sun with a bowl of wa­ter on his head to cur­tail nat­ur­al play­ful be­hav­iour; a child's hand was placed on a hot stove to teach her a les­son; a read­er might­i­ly im­pressed with the bru­tal­i­ties of Is­lam­ic Sharia law in In­done­sia en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly ad­vised T&T to fol­low suit.

Such vi­o­lence is pro­hib­it­ed by both do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al law, but do peo­ple know or care? No doubt these adults are all law-abid­ing and "re­spectable." They are sim­ply fol­low­ing the norms of T&T which em­pha­sise con­trol and vi­o­lence.

Ado­les­cent tur­bu­lence oc­curs nat­u­ral­ly, and es­pe­cial­ly where parental con­trols are very strict. It is a time when par­ents lose con­trol of chil­dren, es­pe­cial­ly in de­viant sub-cul­tures, usu­al­ly pre­dom­i­nant in low-in­come ar­eas. Since licks (vi­o­lence) are our pre­ferred way of con­trol­ling teenagers, con­trol­ling be­hav­iour and vi­o­lence are learnt be­hav­iours both in the home and in the sur­round­ing en­vi­ron­ment. It is our cul­ture, not sin­gle moth­ers, which must held ac­count­able for much of much of the be­hav­iour we de­plore. Min­is­ter Warn­er, your sim­plis­tic think­ing is al­so re­flect­ed in your Gov­ern­ment's ridicu­lous and sex­ist leg­is­la­tion to hold par­ents ac­count­able; crim­i­nal be­hav­iour is in­flu­enced by a host of fac­tors, most of them be­yond the con­trol of par­ents. The leg­is­la­tion is al­so racist be­cause our crim­i­nals are the prod­ucts of pri­mar­i­ly low-in­come Afro-Tri­ni ar­eas where sin­gle moth­ers pre­dom­i­nate.

Most of our mur­ders in­volve il­le­gal drugs, gang-bang­ing, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and planned rob­beries. What­ev­er their type and ori­gin it is cer­tain that mur­der­ers and oth­er vi­o­lent crim­i­nals are gov­erned by a non-func­tion­ing pre-frontal cor­tex. This part of the brain con­trols im­pul­siv­i­ty and ra­tio­nal think­ing. It can be small at birth, or can be dam­aged from un­due tox­ic stress or phys­i­cal in­jury when grow­ing up (as in de­viant sub-cul­tures ). Read­ers are in­vit­ed to read on the In­ter­net "The tox­ic ef­fects of stress" by Dr Jean Clin­ton, child psy­chol­o­gist, Hamil­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, On­tario, Cana­da. Put sim­ply, in very stress­ful sit­u­a­tions blood is di­vert­ed from the pre-frontal cor­tex to the brain's amyg­dala-which is re­spon­si­ble for im­pul­sive and vi­o­lent be­hav­iour. This rais­es a con­tem­po­rary aca­d­e­m­ic ques­tion: can free will be said to ex­ist if the pre-frontal cor­tex does not work or is not work­ing prop­er­ly? If no free will, how can there be re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in law? If no re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, how can death be im­posed for the crime of mur­der? Warn­er, giv­en your sim­plis­tic and sex­ist think­ing on crime, it strikes me that you are em­i­nent­ly ill-suit­ed for your job as Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

Ken­neth As­see

Port-of-Spain