The Tribune

Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett

This piece is derived from extensive research around gang violence, civil society participation and systemic failure. It points to some obvious problems that so far, have been ignored and thus the problem has been allowed if not encouraged to grow.

We may talk about going back to an old way of life, but there simply is no going back, we can only move forward. In the past, gangs and gang violence were obviously less common, although the United States had gangs that dated back to the late 19th century. In many instances, survival was contingent on gang membership in some places.

What has changed is the kind of gangs we have, the reasons they develop as well as the way we deal with abuse and our inter-familial relationships. We have a serious problem with abuse.

We choose not to talk about it. We, in fact, choose to ignore it when it goes on under our noses. Parents may, and that is a strong may, call the police or Social Services when they know their child is being abused by a neighbour, but they certainly will not call the police when they know their child is being abused by a family member.

In reality, they won’t deal with it at all. They will ignore the facts. Ignore the abuse. The acting out will be excused or ignored. If they have to, they will ignore the child, their child.

Oftentimes, when we live in multi-generational homes where extended family members reside as well, and/or non-familial members, there is a tendency for abuse to flourish.

Grandparents will never get their own children into trouble if they are sexually molesting the grandchildren, nieces and nephews. In many instances, these abusive structures encourage exploitation of the children outside the home.

The apparent permissiveness of the adults tells the younger children that they are aware of what is occurring and it is condoned. We assume that these children will grow up to be just fine, no scars, no problems at all.

Years later, we realise that everything has gone wrong, or sometimes they hide it even better and manage to function until something causes the trauma to surface and it explodes.

Given that parents have chosen to ignore the facts for so long, their children are angry, resentful and become dysfunctional. In some cases, even when the parents mean well, but do nothing towards seeking out professional assistance, they encourage the later breakdown of the child’s spiritual being. What develops is a serious social problem that negatively impacts the entire community.

When communities ignore

Research tells us that gangs are a serious problem in the capital city. One Order gang seems to wish to take ownership of all the streets. Many of the young people come to these gangs because they need to belong to something.

They are indirectly abused at home or they are directly abused. Indirect abuse is when they are ignored at home, not cared for, things are allowed to happen and there are no checks or balances put in place.

Direct abuse is when parent and/or guardian is involved in abuse. When people ignore, these severely damaged people act out. They begin to gravitate to gangs because they are offered a home there. They feel welcome.

Research also tells us that gangs protect their family. They protect an area and they provide a structure for communities that have been ignored or abandoned. These are pretty much the same thing. We expect to know or to see persons who are victims of abuse or abandonment by their “look”, but this is far from the case.

Many persons who have experienced abuse will be the most outgoing yet oddly dissociative people in the group. They can disconnect one part from the other and continue to function.

Many victims of abuse are fragile though rough. They are volatile, given internalised anger. Yet no one pays them any mind. Being in a gang allows them to vent their anger. They can express their frustration and their feeling of isolation and abandonment. They are encouraged to be themselves. They are grouped in with younger as well as cooler, older people who lead them, which is exactly what many young people want, even if they won’t tell their parents.

Gangs function well because of these dysfunctions. Gangs also thrive because of a failure of the community and the state. State failure means that people turn to strong members of their community for assistance.

Just as family failure means that young people turn to stronger people in their world to help them, which is usually not a positive relationship. There are too few positive role models within many communities.

Many people will tell stories of their youth and they will say that they survived growing up in poor areas where there were many strong characters ready to step in and encourage them into the gang family because of a strong mother or grandmother who took no nonsense.

This does not necessarily mean to beat mercilessly, but to be strict, firm, clear and caring. Many parents today are too busy to care. Another irony is that we consider this kind of uncaring behaviour absent from “good” families. The same ills that befall “poor” families, occur in “good” families. Again, we assume that families with money are “good” families, when many of them are suffering the abuse experienced in the Fritz Lane home.

Cable Beach is as human as Fox Hill and so open to abuse, human failure and exploitation. Many parents spend hours ignoring their “good” children because they are good.

Many “good” families spend no time together. Many “poor” families spend as much time together as they can, and manage to survive all the insanity that is heaped on them. When we ignore the problems in homes, we create the dysfunction that follows.

When communities experience male failure at alarming rates, we ignore it. Gang violence proliferates across town because the system has failed most young people. We know this because young men and women in schools indicate that their first experiences with gangs were at the end of primary school or in junior high school.

By the time children are 11, they have been approached to become members of a gang. When these same children are hungry for attention, cannot read, cannot write, cannot reason, as most of the youth in the public system given that there is a 50 per cent failure rate, we feel the brunt of their frustration because they become fast gang members and even quicker understudies.

Leaders can be found everywhere, but they are extremely attractive to young people when they have an edge to them, when they resemble idealised characters from movies. When we have 50 per cent failure of young men, we should understand that the system is failing them, not the other way around. That percentage is far too high to simply disregard the facts. As the failure of young people grows, we should be able to change something that can positively turn the tide. Yet nothing happens. Aggressive anti-gang policing is not the answer; it only produces more anger and more active gangs.