By: Audley Phillip

Over the last 12 months or so, we have regularly been stunned by almost daily reports of car thefts, home invasions, reports of missing persons, armed robberies and holdups, violent confrontations, murders and more involving children and young adults, some as young as 16.

It is more than I have ever seen or heard of in Antigua and Barbuda in my lifetime. There is a real change of behaviour among our youths and it is a worrying and an unsettling trend.

Right now, juveniles and young adults make up almost 90 percent of all criminal offenders these days.

I believe that there is a group of about 30 to 40 children and young adults that are responsible for the vast majority of these vicious crimes islandwide.

What is evident and common is that these young criminals do not care about the consequences. They do not think about the next step and the traditional levers in society do not work and seem hopeless, so putting them on remand really doesn’t work either.

Most of them go to jail, serve some time and come out hardened criminals, just intent on continuing with their unlawful actions and so the cycle repeats itself.

We need swift reforms of the youth justice system if we are to make any meaningful progress in addressing this problem.

Whilst we continue to hear a lot of soundbites from politicians, nothing meaningful has been done in order to address the serious problems that confront the youths in the predominantly affected hotspots of Villa Area, Point, Graysfarm, Greenbay, Cassada Gardens, Sutherlands Development, Skerrits Pasture and a few others.

The issues that confront the youths in these areas would not disappear and vanish just like that.

There are obvious serious economic disparities that exacerbate frustration and despair among many youths in these areas, leading to an environment where crime and violence becomes a common outlet.

Whether we want to believe it or not, crime is almost always connected to low income and poverty and the lack of Education only worsen the problem.

We jail our young people for crimes, yet we do not do enough to help solve the problems.

The social deprivation and lack of good parenting are a common factor as well in many of these hotspot areas and nothing is being done to provide support services, opportunities and other meaningful assistance to the many struggling parents.

If we do not help our youths to find their part in life, our renowned penal institution 1735 would soon be bursting at the seam with no space to accommodate them.