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The Situation of The Bahamian Youth in The Bahamas
Related to country: Bahamas

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A State of Crisis: Growing Problems Facing Youth:
By Sasha L. Lightbourne -
Nassau, Bahamas:



The country is in a state of crisis due to the situation of its youth, Chairman of the Juvenile Panel Magistrate Carolyn Vogt-Evans asserted Wednesday night.

"The future is at risk and so we must look at solutions," said Magistrate Evans, who was a panelist at a Jones Communications sponsored town meeting on "The Situation of Youth in The Bahamas" at the Wyndham Resort.

"We are all aware of the crisis the family is in and any reasonable thinking citizen knows that the social ills that affect our country today stem from the breakdown in the family structure."

There have been growing concerns in many circles about the involvement of young people in violence and the number of young people falling victim to crimes.

Four out of 27 murder victims for 2008 have been high school students and police say most of the crimes committed this year have been by young males.

Magistrate Evans said that every citizen has been touched by the many problems that exist in family life.

"The problems of our youth and the abuse of our children in the Bahamas raises the question of are we ready to deal with them for we are in a state of emergency," she said. "The state of affairs is the rampant criminal activity of our children and we have to now focus on saving the parents to save the children."

She said from her research in the juvenile court she has found that many of the problems juveniles face stem from lack of parental guidance.

"Ninety percent of the cases coming before the juvenile court indicate that parents have not done all they could to ensure that discipline is in the home," Magistrate Evans said. "The state of affairs includes mothers who have either lost their maternal instincts or just simply don’t care."

She said this state of affairs shows that fathers who neglect their children when they are born, whether in or out of wedlock, cause a problem.

"The state of affairs indicates a lack of spiritual guidance or influence," Magistrate Evans continued. "The state of affairs is a lack of involvement of parents in their children’s educational development because we as a nation are doing our children an injustice by not ensuring they can read."

She stressed that the majority of the young people coming before her court are illiterate.

The town meeting was moderated by JCN’s Nikki Bethell. Other panelists included, Ishmael Smith, principal at the Penn Pratt Co-Educational Unit, and Patrice Miller, an educator and former facilitator of the National Youth Service programme.

Mr. Smith explained that the Penn Pratt Co-Educational Unit is the school system that residents of Simpson Penn Centre for Boys and Williemae Pratt Centre for Girls are placed in.

"Sixty seven percent of all of our students placed into the school are reading at a grade three level or below and 80 percent of those students are males," he said.

"These young persons have either contravened the law of the land, are awaiting trial or their parents have brought them to the court to render them uncontrollable to which they become wards of the state. Once they would have become resident at either one of the centres, Willimae Pratt Centre for Girls or Simpson Penn Centre for Boys, the government requires that we provide an education for those students."

Mr. Smith noted that once these children reach 16 they are discharged and are returned to whatever environment or guardian that is identified by the Department of Social Services.

"We are providing what we can and we are striving to be efficient and efficient in this case is making the best with the little resources we have," he said. "We are producing results with nothing."

Ms. Miller said that part of the problem of crime as it involves young people is that those young people have to be adults.

"In my experience, I have met children who have to share the workload and responsibility in their homes," she said. "They pay rent. I’ve had a 14 year old who has worked as a stripper at night. Her challenges were that her mother expected her to be a student in the day and a prostitute in the night."

Ms. Miller said that one of the major issues is that parents do not understand their children.

"The second thing that I’ve experienced with all of our children in all the institutions that I have worked in, the key thing is that they all shared one thing in common: they have all experienced a loss of some kind," she said.

According to Ms. Miller, that loss could be attributed to death of a loved one or separation between parents.

"We as Bahamians don’t subscribe to counseling so as a result these children are left to grieve alone," she said. "That grief is then turned into anger and hatred and they live it out.

"Our children are good children. The problem is that we have poor adults. Our adults are not leading by example and one of our key issues is that no adult wants to take responsibility."

Ms. Miller said Bahamian children are just modeling the behaviour they see from the adults.

During the town meeting, Ms. Bethell highlighted statistics from a report entitled "The Situation of Youth in The Bahamas" prepared by Lorraine Blank for the government and the Inter-American Development Bank in January 2005.

Most notable of all the statistics were that 40 percent of male youth and 23 percent of female youth who are out of school did not receive a passing grade on any Ministry of Education external examination.

The report also showed that 66 percent of girls and 57 percent of boys reported that they felt like hurting or killing someone on more than one occasion.

Thirty-five percent of males and 13 percent of females carry a weapon outside of school while 20 percent of male secondary students and 6 percent of female secondary students carry a weapon to school, according to the report.

At the end of the meeting, suggestions were put forth as to how to curb violence involving young people in the Bahamas.

"Parents are urged not only to be more accountable for their children, but also asked to encourage their children to respect authority," Magistrate Evans said. "Parents should also monitor what their kids watch on television, the internet and also what they listen to."

Magistrate Evans also suggested that fathers must become more involved and parents need to monitor their children’s company.


May 16, 2008

May 16, 2008 | 9:10 PM Comments  0 comments

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