A pan­el of Chris­t­ian lead­ers and a mil­i­tary chief have iden­ti­fied tem­po­rary un­em­ploy­ment re­lief, such as the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) and Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (Cepep), as a ma­jor fac­tor af­fect­ing crime.

Speak­ing at a me­dia brief­ing at the con­clu­sion of the Prayers Plus–Find­ing So­lu­tions for Crime Sym­po­sium at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre on Thurs­day evening, the five-mem­ber pan­el, which in­clud­ed Vice Chief of De­fence Staff Brig Gen An­tho­ny Phillips-Spencer, said there were se­ri­ous de­fi­cien­cies and cor­rupt ac­tiv­i­ty in the pro­grammes and these need­ed to be ur­gent­ly ad­dressed by the Gov­ern­ment.

"We think that there is clear­ly a cor­re­la­tion be­tween the cur­rent ap­proach in these pro­grammes and what we are wit­ness­ing in terms of the preva­lence in gang cul­ture," Phillips-Spencer said.His com­ments come days af­ter Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith an­nounced that the con­tro­ver­sial Life Sport pro­gramme, which aims to teach life skills to un­em­ployed youths in high crime ar­eas, would be placed un­der the con­trol of the De­fence Force.

Last Sat­ur­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced the trans­fer of the pro­gramme from the Min­istry of Sport to Grif­fith's min­istry amid al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion.Phillips-Spencer said the is­sue with the re­struc­tur­ing of such pro­grammes arose dur­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion of busi­ness lead­ers dur­ing the three-day sym­po­sium of Chris­t­ian lead­ers, which al­so fea­tured me­dia ex­ec­u­tives, non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGOs) and Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie.

He said that two im­por­tant com­ments made in­clud­ed the need to re­vis­it the re­la­tion­ship be­tween re­ward and ef­fort and an ob­ser­va­tion that at­tempts were be­ing made by the Gov­ern­ment to "buy peace" from crim­i­nals."The con­tin­ued ef­fort to 'buy peace' high­lights fur­ther the re­al­i­ty that gangs and gang cul­ture is now re­plac­ing what would oth­er­wise be strong com­mu­ni­ty life," Phillips-Spencer said.

He said a ma­jor is­sue with the pro­grammes was that they were be­ing used by some de­por­tees at­tempt­ing to rein­te­grate in­to so­ci­ety.

"We don't think that is pro­duc­tive or con­tributes to the kind of en­vi­ron­ment we want," Phillips-Spencer said. His views were strong­ly en­dorsed by di­rec­tor of Prayers Plus Cleve­land Thomas, who led the pan­el and first high­light­ed the is­sue.

"With all the re­ports of what is hap­pen­ing with these pro­grammes I be­lieve that you don't have to be Chris­t­ian to recog­nise there is a need for a re­vis­it­ing and a re­think­ing of it," Thomas said.He said such pro­grammes should on­ly tar­get able-bod­ied un­em­ployed cit­i­zens seek­ing tem­po­rary re­lief and train­ing to re­turn to the work­force."There are those peo­ple in so­ci­ety that need fi­nan­cial help. I think the is­sue that comes up over and over is that it needs to be tar­get­ed, spe­cif­ic and man­aged and man­aged well," Thomas said.

Pres­i­dent of the Coun­cil of Evan­gel­i­cal Church­es of T&T Desmond Austin added his voice to the call for re­form of the pro­grammes, while say­ing there was a need to move away from "hand­outs" to ones that en­cour­aged in­no­va­tion and cre­ativ­i­ty."We recog­nise that in our coun­try, where we have a con­cept of hand­outs and that we have a sit­u­a­tion where many of our cit­i­zens have be­come men­di­cants (beg­gars). We have peo­ple that have be­come con­sumers rather than pro­duc­ers," Austin said.

While they all agreed that the Gov­ern­ment need­ed to re­think some of its an­ti-crime mea­sures, they ac­knowl­edged that the Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty al­so need­ed to in­crease its ef­forts in ad­dress­ing the is­sue.

Austin said, "For a very long time the church has been ac­cused of not do­ing any­thing with re­gard to crime. The prob­lem is over the many years we have been work­ing in var­i­ous spheres in so­ci­ety but on this oc­ca­sion we have brought to­geth­er the church and civ­il so­ci­ety and have ham­mered out var­i­ous ways that we can work to­geth­er to make a dent in this sort of ac­tiv­i­ty."

An­oth­er crime-fight­ing so­lu­tion, high­light­ed by the pan­el­lists, was a call by some Chris­t­ian lead­ers for Gov­ern­ment to in­tro­duce leg­is­la­tion con­trol­ling vi­o­lent toys and video games as well as to pos­si­bly cen­sor the broad­cast of vi­o­lent con­tent by the me­dia.

The call for cen­sor­ship was strong­ly sup­port­ed by pan­el­list Dr Mar­garet El­cock, founder of Fam­i­ly Fo­cus Broad­cast­ing Ser­vice that op­er­ates ra­dio sta­tion Isaac 98.9 FM. She called on pub­lish­ers of dai­ly news­pa­pers to try to re­frain from pub­lish­ing grue­some crimes on the front pages.She said, "It would be so nice if every­body would de­cide for a week let us not print the hor­ri­ble news that is hap­pen­ing in our na­tion and maybe the per­pe­tra­tors might re­alise that they are not the cen­tre of at­ten­tion."

The pan­el­lists al­so ex­pressed their sup­port for the rein­tro­duc­tion of faith-based learn­ing pro­grammes in schools cou­pled with ini­tia­tives geared to­wards anger man­age­ment and con­flict res­o­lu­tion."Get it back in­side of the schools. It is the ab­sence of that which con­tributes to some of the prob­lems that we have," Thomas, the or­gan­is­er of the sym­po­sium, said.He said the sym­po­sium sought to bring Chris­t­ian lead­ers to­geth­er to dis­cuss the is­sue of crime and to find so­lu­tions to ad­dress it.

"We ac­cept­ed that there is the need for a unit­ed voice to speak out against the acts of cor­rup­tion, un­fair­ness, dis­hon­esty and every­thing else that is plagu­ing our na­tion," Thomas said, an­nounc­ing that the lead­ers had agreed to es­tab­lish and fund a cen­tre which would specif­i­cal­ly co-or­di­nate the Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty's ef­forts in the fight against crime."

Say­ing the par­tic­i­pants in the con­fer­ence un­der­stood that the plans would not be an overnight suc­cess, Thomas added, "We can­not overem­pha­sise that the prob­lem is so deep root­ed in every sec­tor that it would be an er­ror to think that with a three-day sym­po­sium we will have all the so­lu­tions and crime would dis­ap­pear as of to­mor­row."

He said an­oth­er meet­ing would be held with­in the next nine months to a year to as­sess the progress on the 14 rec­om­men­da­tions and pos­si­ble so­lu­tions agreed to dur­ing this week's sym­po­sium. "It is time we speak up. We can­not sim­ply af­ford to hear what is go­ing on, recog­nise that it is wrong, con­tin­ue to com­plain and do noth­ing about it," Thomas said.