Criminologist blames delinquency
on Govt’s inattention to education
PHILIPSBURG--Dutch Criminologist Dr. Tim Boekhout says that while the delinquent behaviour of students seems to be increasing, the priority of government is not education and that does not help.
He said it was no surprise that children behaved violently, as they were put to literally bump into each other in small corridors of schools. Dr. Boekhout, who is conducting a survey on youth delinquency as part of a 33-country study by Utrecht University Law School and University of the Netherlands Antilles (UNA), said he had visited a school in St. Maarten designed to be a shopping complex that should house 250 students comfortably, but housed more than 500.
He said, “All the schools are in one area in St. Peters/South Reward and the schools start and end at the same time. A solution to the fights that would even improve traffic is to have the schools close at different times, so that the children aren’t all bumping into each other on the street.”
He said, “Children will always group together and can be violent, but that’s not necessarily the main characteristic of the group. Sometimes it’s just for safety.” He also was of the opinion that violence begot violence and the fact that parents beat their children still in the Antilles contributed to violent behaviour amongst children.
He called the crowded schools “big education factories” and said functioning in them was difficult for students at best. He urged government to find better solutions and commended teachers as being the “one thing that has saved St. Maarten’s education system.”
He said Government seemed more interested in hotels than schools. “I don’t think education is a priority for your government, but if they really want to become a country they really have to think about long term investment in St. Maarten, through education,” said Dr. Boekhout.
Regarding the use of drugs, Dr. Boekhout said it was not as big a problem in the Netherlands Antilles as in Europe and the United States. However, he noticed that in many more children in St. Maarten admitted to smoking marijuana than in Curaçao.
He said that while violence came with the territory when dealing in drugs, it could not be clearly determined whether drug amongst children directly contributed to youth violence.
He said group gathering is a culture and the careless use of the word “gangs” could do more harm than good. Some traditional concepts of gangs are groups from lower income areas that use illegal activities such as drug dealing and violence and have a “territory.”
However, today there is a much more modern concept developed by Dr. David Brotherton of London who works in the United States currently, on the East and West Coasts, who said they were social organisations.
Dr. Boekhout said group gathering was a self-defence mechanism, and a need for an identity and television influence were contributors to groups gathering that were often called “gangs.”
He said asking children questions about their conflicts and conflict resolution courses were easy solutions. He said policy makers often forget to ask the people concerned, “but if you spend a half an hour in the St. Peters area, they would learn a lot.”
In St. Maarten, Dr. Boekhout said, some groups associate because they are from the same school or neighbourhood and search for identity. But while this may be true, their search is because the structure around them is not supportive. He said, “And here that’s easily seen, because St. Maarten is a country on overdrive.”
He said the inhabitants and government were unable to keep up with the rapid growth, which in his opinion was not well structured to ensure that education and social stability weren’t adversely affected. He said a child being left alone with the TV was bad, as influence by TV is clear. “If you disagree, ask yourself why major corporations spend billions every year on advertising,” said Boekhout.
He suggested investing in youth sports and regular interschool competitions for children.
He referred to the recent Safety Plan St. Maarten report, which mentioned that the World Bank had stated 60 per cent of all the drug trafficking in the Caribbean was done in the Netherlands Antilles, almost 50 grams per person as of 2004. However, he urges the society to have a balanced reaction to crimes.
He said it was not wise to exaggerate the impact of victimless crimes like drug possession while murder crimes were almost celebrated. He suggested that educators and government remember that children experimented. He said studies had shown that “most people who experiment using marijuana or cocaine don’t continue. And those who continue mostly stop after the age of 25 and certainly 30.” (By Alfred Harley)
