Yvonne Ba­boolal

Stu­dents from sec­ondary schools all over T&T have come up with a Youth De­c­la­ra­tion on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty which they are send­ing to the Gov­ern­ment and in­clud­ed in it is a call for hang­ings.Some stu­dents al­so felt if a man killed some­one, he should be killed or giv­en some pun­ish­ment to match the crime.More re­wards for peo­ple who re­port crime, the sus­pen­sion and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of delin­quent stu­dents, more up-to-date crime-fight­ing tech­nol­o­gy and a plan to deal with cor­rupt po­lice of­fi­cers are al­so part of the de­c­la­ra­tion.

It was made up in half- an-hour by the stu­dents at a na­tion­al youth con­sul­ta­tion on crime and vi­o­lence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Caribbean (USC) Mara­cas Val­ley,on Wednes­day."You were able to do in half-an-hour what peo­ple de­lib­er­ate over for days," Pe­tra Pierre-Robin­son, one of the or­gan­is­ers, told them.The stu­dents were in­vit­ed to come up with crime re­duc­tion strate­gies which were com­piled even as they spoke, to be pre­sent­ed as the Youth De­c­la­ra­tion to the Gov­ern­ment with a re­quest for in­clu­sion in its na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty pol­i­cy.Present at the event was Jus­tice Min­is­ter Christlyn Moore, who gave an ad­dress, and Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin.Pres­i­dent of the South Caribbean Con­fer­ence of Sev­enth-Day Ad­ven­tists (SDA), Dr Clin­ton Val­ley, broth­er of late for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Ken­neth Val­ley, said drug deal­ers were con­trol­ling the agen­da of young peo­ple in T&T and in­still­ing in them a neg­a­tive sys­tem of val­ues that was con­tribut­ing to the un­con­trol­lable crime sit­u­a­tion.

He said there was an ur­gent need to counter that with pos­i­tive val­ues and the USC, run by the SDA church, was the on­ly ac­cred­it­ed uni­ver­si­ty that had the moral au­thor­i­ty to speak on val­ues.He said: "I think re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions and or­gan­i­sa­tions are re­spon­si­ble for in­cul­cat­ing val­ues and we are send­ing out a call to join with the USC in this dri­ve."Val­ley said the USC or­gan­ised a Val­ues Em­pha­sis Week at which the youth con­sul­ta­tion was a part."We want­ed to get the youth's ideas on how to re­duce crime," he said.Moore urged the stu­dents to hold fast to good val­ues and said that was a fun­da­men­tal facet in not com­ing in­to con­flict with the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.She said not all crim­i­nal be­hav­iour, how­ev­er, stemmed from hav­ing a lack of val­ues.Drug ad­dic­tion was a ma­jor con­trib­u­tor and il­lit­er­a­cy. Moore said a large seg­ment of the crim­i­nal pop­u­la­tion had lit­er­a­cy and learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties."This can af­fect your abil­i­ty to process val­ues," she not­ed.

Men­tal ill­ness­es were an­oth­er sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in crim­i­nal be­hav­iour, the Min­is­ter said, adding: "Quite a lot of crim­i­nals have un­di­ag­nosed men­tal health is­sues. Men­tal ill­ness af­fects your abil­i­ty to ar­tic­u­late val­ues."Dot­tin re­called the re­cent killing of 17-year old Sun­shine Al­fred of Moru­ga who was re­port­ed­ly beat­en in the head and stabbed re­peat­ed­ly with what is be­lieved to be an ice pick.Ti­tling his pre­sen­ta­tion, The Re­turn of Sun­shine, Dot­tin said drug deal­ers were on a ma­jor re­cruit­ment dri­ve with teenagers.He said young peo­ple have been left out of crime fight­ing strate­gies but gang lead­ers have not left them out.He ad­vised the stu­dents that be­ing as poor as a church rat was no ex­cuse, how­ev­er, for turn­ing to crime for gain.