It is easy to un­der­stand the deep frus­tra­tion be­ing felt by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, a for­mer se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer, in his call for chil­dren to face the courts as adults when charged with se­ri­ous crim­i­nal of­fences. The num­ber of such in­stances he must have ex­pe­ri­enced dur­ing his decades of front­line po­lice work with young peo­ple in­volved, must sure­ly have in­flu­enced his present-day think­ing.

How­ev­er, Alexan­der’s ad­vo­ca­cy may be far from a mean­ing­ful and long-last­ing so­lu­tion to more than a cou­ple decades of young peo­ple, from their ear­ly teens to 20s, be­ing deeply in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

The re­al­i­ty is, if im­ple­ment­ed, what is seen as a so­lu­tion may turn out to have the ef­fect of spread­ing and deep­en­ing the crim­i­nal cul­ture in­to which young peo­ple are be­ing sucked. That is, they may very well be­come enured in such treat­ment and so de­ter­mined to fit the role that so­ci­ety has mapped out for them. And that will be op­posed to treat­ment meant to demon­strate un­der­stand­ing, dis­play le­nien­cy and for an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the need for re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

Yes, it has be­come over­bear­ing and un­ac­cept­able to see young peo­ple in­volved in ma­jor crim­i­nal­i­ty of the kind so­ci­ety has ex­pe­ri­enced in re­cent years. But one re­al­i­ty of treat­ing the young of­fend­ers as adult of­fend­ers means toss­ing them in­to the same cells with hard­ened crim­i­nals. In such ac­com­mo­da­tion, they will be tu­tored by the ir­re­triev­ably crim­i­nal. The re­sult will be yet an­oth­er gen­er­a­tion of crim­i­nals to cre­ate hav­oc for the rest of the na­tion.

We are not knock­ing Min­is­ter Alexan­der, ap­pre­ci­at­ing that dur­ing his ca­reer as a crime fight­er, he at­tempt­ed to con­quer law­less­ness by young and old. But then, he did what could have been ex­pect­ed of him as a law en­force­ment of­fi­cer.

To­day, how­ev­er, Alexan­der is in an el­e­vat­ed and ex­pand­ed role as Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty. Sure­ly, one el­e­ment of his job will be to bring so­lu­tions to the ta­ble to deal with our youth who have gone astray. We are, there­fore, sug­gest­ing that he gets the tech­ni­cal of­fi­cers in his min­istry to de­vel­op a plan for the trans­for­ma­tion of youth trapped in a life of crime.

This does not mean let­ting young peo­ple off the hook, but rather to in­tro­duce and/or ex­pand on re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion to pre­vent crim­i­nal­i­ty from be­ing soaked in­to their lifestyles. We are al­so not ad­vo­cat­ing that er­rant young peo­ple on­ly re­ceive the prover­bial “slap on the wrist” when they com­mit crimes; we are say­ing that pun­ish­ment must be ac­com­pa­nied by re­form.

If not, Alexan­der’s min­istry and those of his col­leagues en­gaged in oth­er crime-fight­ing en­deav­ours will be ex­haust­ed out of their use­ful­ness, with gen­er­a­tions of even more crim­i­nal­ly-mind­ed and in­tent young peo­ple adopt­ing lifestyles with no pos­si­bil­i­ty of re­turn.

If such pro­jec­tions be­come re­al­i­ty, then Alexan­der, his col­league min­is­ters, the oth­er se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies of the gov­ern­ment and the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion will be­come del­uged and with­out hope to counter and to re­form young crim­i­nals and bring change to their lifestyles.