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REDUCE YOUTH VIOLENCE
URGENT!
Herbert Gayle
Contributor
R
educing youth violence is more
complex than suppressing it. At
present, most countries with high
homicide rates understand perfectly how
to suppress violence, and security forces
get overwhelming support from govern-
ments to do so in time for the next general
election. Since the year 2000, the three
most violent countries in the Caribbean
(Jamaica, Belize, and Trinidad) have
actively focused their efforts on suppress-
ing violence. Their governments have
reacted each time the murders soar with
special squads, states of emergency, pro-
longed curfews, community invasions,
and other forms of aggression. The results
have been dips and spikes, but the pattern
is an increase in deaths within a five-year
cycle.
Once the homicide rate surpasses 30
per 100,000, it requires luck and extreme
muscle to get positive results within a
five-year cycle from the application of
force. For instance, the Tivoli invasion
was so massive that it created a trench in
homicide between 2010 and 2014.
However, fortuitously, it also displaced
some core actors in the violence econo-
my. Yet the 2015 and 2016 homicide data
show that pre-Tivoli violence levels are
again our reality.
PUBLISHED: FEBRUARY 2, 2017