Soyi­ni Grey

Se­nior Re­porter

The killing of a 23-month-old child in Bel­mont yes­ter­day has raised fresh con­cerns about ris­ing vi­o­lence and the risk of so­ci­ety be­com­ing de­sen­si­tised to re­peat­ed killings.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad warned that the pub­lic must guard against nor­mal­is­ing such vi­o­lence.

He said there is of­ten height­ened at­ten­tion when a child is killed, but stressed that all lives are “sig­nif­i­cant and of val­ue,” and cau­tioned against re­duc­ing mur­ders to sta­tis­tics.

How­ev­er, he does ad­mit to be­ing con­cerned that the per­pe­tra­tors could have con­duct­ed yes­ter­day’s shoot­ing, or the mur­ders of 11-month-old Jay­den Sut­ton in March and nine-year-old J’Lay­na Arm­strong in April, de­spite pos­si­bly know­ing that a child was in the car.

“Be­cause many of these acts tend to be planned and care­ful­ly or­ches­trat­ed, and all of that. You may see the vic­tim in a par­tic­u­lar set­ting, you may re­alise ‘OK, there is a child’, and yet the per­pe­tra­tor may not nec­es­sar­i­ly say ‘Look, let’s change the plan, let’s back down at the mo­ment, there’s a child in the way’. You de­cide you go­ing to gun down the per­son any­way.”

Dr Seep­er­sad said this may be a sign that some­thing is fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong with our so­ci­ety in a way we are yet to ful­ly un­pack.

Writ­ing about the re­gion’s ris­ing vi­o­lence on his Face­book page hours be­fore yes­ter­day’s triple killing in Bel­mont, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ Pro Vice Chan­cel­lor and prin­ci­pal of its Five Is­lands cam­pus, Prof C Justin Robin­son, di­ag­nosed a prob­lem he be­lieves re­quires an “all of so­ci­ety com­pact against crime.”

Dr Robin­son said, “Fam­i­lies must raise boys who do not be­lieve man­hood re­quires dom­i­na­tion, mon­ey with­out work or a weapon. Faith com­mu­ni­ties must refuse to bless politi­cians, donors or lo­cal strong­men who con­sort with gun­men. Schools must stop pro­cess­ing boys out of the build­ing and in­to the morgue. The pri­vate sec­tor must move be­yond pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty to scaled ap­pren­tice­ships and stop laun­der­ing crim­i­nal re­spectabil­i­ty through con­tracts. Me­dia must aban­don body count voyeurism for re­port­ing that fol­lows the gun, the mon­ey and the court file.”

Dr Robin­son called for ac­tion, over lamen­ta­tion. He said prime min­is­ters and gov­ern­ment min­is­ters who are un­able to pro­duce re­sults should be re­placed and that “strength re­builds what is bro­ken: courts that work, po­lice who are ac­count­able, schools that do not eject, fam­i­lies that do not flinch, church­es that do not bless gun­men and a re­gion that speaks with one voice to those who arm us.”

How­ev­er, Dr Seep­er­sad is hope­ful. He said the Gov­ern­ment, and its Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty in par­tic­u­lar, are be­ing proac­tive, and that he had met with the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary and the Di­rec­tor or Pol­i­cy at the Min­istry that morn­ing.

“Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry has been work­ing with UWI and oth­er en­ti­ties: Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty (CA), the Courts, po­lice, etc, in try­ing to de­vel­op a very com­pre­hen­sive pre­ven­tion and in­ter­ven­tion frame­work fo­cus­ing on com­mu­ni­ties, fam­i­lies and chil­dren,” he said. “We could re­al­ly start to stem this tide and deal with the root of the prob­lem.”

One of the agen­cies tasked with en­sur­ing that chil­dren’s needs are cared for, es­pe­cial­ly in times of cri­sis is the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty. It is typ­i­cal­ly en­gaged to as­sist in the non-crim­i­nal as­pects of the case to pro­vide psy­choso­cial sup­port.

The agency’s psy­chol­o­gist, who is at­tached to the au­thor­i­ty’s In­ves­ti­ga­tion and In­ter­ven­tion Unit, Krista Ali, said the au­thor­i­ty is work­ing along­side the po­lice ser­vice in these mat­ters.

She said the au­thor­i­ty’s scope can ex­tend be­yond the ini­tial im­pact zone. In of­fer­ing ad­vice to par­ents con­cerned with the im­pact of news re­ports on their chil­dren, Ali said they ought to process the in­for­ma­tion for them­selves be­fore they can at­tempt to help their chil­dren through it.

Ali, how­ev­er, cau­tioned that to­day’s chil­dren ex­ist in a heav­i­ly con­nect­ed so­ci­ety and are ex­posed to sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion at high­er rates than pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions.