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Superintendent of Prisons, Lieutenant Colonel John Nurse (right), presenting Damian Headley with his award for being Best at Self-Defence.

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Prison officers demonstrating self-defence moves at last Friday’s Passing Out Parade.

Attorney General concerned

ATTORNEY General, Adriel Brathwaite, is concerned that young Barbadian men are failing to pass the mark to qualify to join national security services.

Delivering remarks at the Passing Out Parade for recruits who participated in Course No. 1, at Her Majesty’s Prisons Dodds, last Friday, Brathwaite, who indicated that the number of young men getting into trouble with the law due to their participation in unlawful activities was rising, said he could not help but to notice that more females were on parade than there were males.

Out of the 21 graduates on parade, only six were males. There were over 200 applicants.

“When I did the inspection, when I came initially, I turned to Lieutenant Colonel John Nurse and I said to him, ‘Where are the young men?’ He said, ‘Many came, but many also failed for various reasons.’ So we can only assume they have returned to the blocks.

“As a country, as a Government, as a people, we have to do something more, we have to look at what is working. We have to look at what is not working, and we have to address this vexing issue as to what is happening with our young men,” he said.

Brathwaite stressed it is worrisome that all of the respective law enforcement services in Barbados are finding it difficult to find young men that qualify and fit the overall criteria to join the services.

In the Attorney General’s opinion, unless the issue is seriously addressed, and the core issues that face many of the young men examined, and they are moved back to a stage where they accept responsibilities to themselves, their families, and the country, the particular challenge the law enforcement services currently face finding men to employ, will continue.

“At this point in time, we are looking at programmes in particular to address the youth coming to prison; the many young men in particular who are coming to us. We accept that given the level of violence and other things that we are seeing among young people in this country and in particular our young men, we need some serious interventions. Even at the prison setting this is required,” he said. (AH)

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