Emotional and angry, and understandably so, was the state of Prisons Commissioner Sterling Stewart at the funeral service of slain prisons officer David Millette.
The officer was dealt fatal bullets in his home district sitting in front the wheel of his vehicle, obviously without a chance to defend himself against his assailant/s almost two weeks ago.
Delivering the eulogy at the funeral service, Commissioner Stewart asked a few penetrating questions, not of the people at the service, but of T&T and a few of those questions were asked of them rhetorically, the Commissioner and all of T&T knowing the answers.
“Where have these killers come from?” We all know the answer to that question. They come from the society in which all the citizens and residents of T&T live.
They have come from homes, some having parents, many without. These young people have attended national schools for varying periods of time.
Many have had problems grappling with the school curriculum; many have not been able to find areas of interest to them, so they turn away to more-attractive-for-them options.
Many times those so-called options prove to be detrimental to them in the long run.
For many young men and women, spirituality is missing, so too social and community interaction with their peers and guided by elders. Institutions of yesteryear, such as scouts and guides have disappeared and there is little by way of social institutions with the capacity to pass on the positive culture.
So yes, Commissioner Stewart, the young criminals of today emerge from within the society and therefore we have to take responsibility for them.
Commissioner Stewart also correctly chided those who, out of hand, condemn all prisons officers. In engaging in such generalisation there is no thought for the hard-working officers whose job it is to reform those who have been sent to them.
Teenage pregnancy, a frequent occurrence in the society leaves young people without the capacity and sometimes aptitude to be parents.
Rapists; drugs users and dealers and gangs of young boys badly influenced by older young men already caught up in crime; prisons systems and cells inhumanely over-crowded without any possibility to achieve reform and transformation of the young men and women who find themselves there; a criminal justice system which at times keeps young men and women charged for petty crimes in Remand Yard for ten years—these are factors which eventually end in the perpetration of a murder like that of officer Millette.
The state of criminality is sucking up resources, premature lives, creating disorder and at times mayhem in the society.
Clearly this deep, social problem with so many tentacles and implications—spread right through the society—has not been attended to in any significant manner.
Succeeding governments have spent tens of billions of dollars on all kinds of projects but have not been focused on what the requirements are to resolve criminality in the society.
The society has to find the way back starting in the homes and in the communities. The Government has its responsibility for the infrastructure to contain and treat with crime, but every individual and group must be part of the solution.
Concentrated programmes in communities to counter the growth of the criminal culture; massive community involvement and the end of the politicisation of crime are absolutely necessary.
The risk is that there could arrive a point when there would be no hope of turning the tide.