EDITORIAL: Too many young men in prison

TOO many of the nation’s young males are taking up residence at Her Majesty’s Prison Dodds in St. Philip.

From the statistics given, the newspaper stories we read and news clips we hear, it would appear that too many of the nation’s young men seem bent on going down the wrong path. The latest figures suggest that around 1 000 males are imprisoned at Her Majesty’s Prison Dodds. Now some have listed “irresponsible parenting” as one of the factors that has some bearing on what is becoming a very sad situation, which sees so many of our young men becoming inmates. Of course, it is a known fact that drug use also comes into play, when looking at the factors that have some bearing on whether males end up in prison or not. Gun violence of late seems to be a big factor as well. Such things as a dysfunctional family environment, poverty, low intelligence and high impulsivity leading to school dropouts, have been named amongst a list of other factors also.

It would appear that a number of our Black males are following those from “up North”, displaying a number of negative behaviours, mimicking their lifestyles and what is portrayed in the media also. Information suggests that Black males between ages 20 to 34 have the highest rate of incarceration when compared to other races on earth, and studies really need to be done to find out why so many males are falling through the cracks.

There is a body of research at present however, which lends credence to another factor which we shall call “father absence”. There have been some local studies which hint towards how this factor has affected those at the juvenile detention facility called the Government Industrial School, also located at Dodds in St. Philip. What has been found is that a significant number of boys there do not have the privilege of having a father or even a father figure in their lives and they are influenced to go down the wrong path from early.

While we are not suggesting that the absence of a father or father figure automatically means that boys will go down a spiralling path to deviance, we can be sure that many who work with delinquent young boys will tell you that a strong, positive male influence in a male’s life from early, can do wonders to build positive character and shape the male mind in a positive fashion. A positive male influence may be the deciding factor in whether or not young deviant males graduate to prison.

Taking all these factors into account, we really need some hard core programmes that will really reach out and touch our males and save some of them from taking up residence at Dodds and even becoming repeat visitors. There are too many young men in prison sitting idle, too many wearing their prison status as a badge of honour and too few people doing anything about it. We cannot afford to continue to lose what should be productive members of society. We, therefore, need to act now to reverse this worsening trend of having too many young men filling up our prison.