Report on Youth Anti-Crime Initiative Presented To Cabinet

Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of National Security, Senator Kern Spencer yesterday (Oct. 6), presented a report to Cabinet on the Youth Anti-crime Initiative, 14 months after it was launched.
The report by Senator Spencer was made under a recent addition to the agenda of the Cabinet meeting, whereby every first Monday of the month, one member of the Council of Ministers makes a presentation of his or her choice.
Speaking at the post-Cabinet press briefing which followed, Minister of Information, Senator Burchell Whiteman said the purpose of the Youth Anti-crime Initiative was to find a way to engage the youth, who are the ones most at risk in respect of crime, in a programme of dialogue, which would address some of their needs.
“The reality,” Senator Whiteman said, “is that young people are both the segment of the population most at risk, in terms of being the victims of crime, as also, that grouping of the population most involved in committing crime”.
Pointing out that Senator Spencer’s report indicated what programmes were in place and their objectives, Senator Whiteman informed that there were programmes related to prevention, including the encouragement of young people to go to school and focus on their education, and the treatment of young people, who fall afoul of the law, in terms of referrals for counselling and probation, among others.
Assuring that the report was encouraging, in terms of what had been done during the one-year existence of the Youth Anti-crime Initiative, Senator Whiteman noted that in dealing with this particular programme, the Ministry of National Security was not limiting itself to what had been done so far, but was always looking for new ways to improve the programme.
“One of the critical decisions,” Senator Whiteman said, was that “as the Ministry of Education, Youth and Culture has the overall responsibility for co-ordinating youth policy and ensuring that there is no duplication, there should be a monthly meeting of all the principal actors involved in all youth programmes, so that co-ordination can be strengthened, there is an opportunity to monitor the progress on all fronts; and the target population, especially in respect of this Youth Anti-crime Initiative, is reached”.