At this time Saint Lucia is virtually inundated with criminal activity of a felonious and heinous type. The incidence of homicide is alarming and on the increase and unlawful personal injury seem to be a banal past-time in the resolution of contentious issues, particularly among the youth.
Solutions are being sought on official, informal and institutional levels, but yet the carnage continues unabated. The question is Why? We seek the rehabilitation of inmates, writ large, but to no avail. The fifteen year old commits murder as well as the thirty-five year old. And juxtaposed to the gruesome statistic is the venal, criminal commission by those who were never arraigned or incarcerated. Why this grotesque failure on this level? Is it because the society needs to be rehabilitated?
We seem to need more and more police in whatever the mode and wherever situate. But isn’t that indicative of a very glaring and alarming fact that the society itself is on a wrong path? We do have a certain confidence in our police force; but then it is not a blind and blinding confidence. For the resolution of our current problems it must never be.
As we have just indicated the society needs to be rehabilitated, and that implies that its constitutive elements, in isolation and plurality need to be addressed. And one of the major and indispensable element of this society is the family unit. That term in its essence implies cohesiveness and therefore is diametrically opposed to crime which on whatever the level, whatever its mode, whatever its manifestation and whatever its time, is divisive.
Family and Crime cannot co-exist; and the ascendancy of one is consequentially and aetiologically to the descendency of the other. Hence it is imperative that attention at this time, and for the longevity and survival of the society that attention be focused on the five-year old sitting on the school benches of this nation. Before he sits, he must be prepared to sit and it is this sitting process that engages in ascending order, mother, father, school and church. And it is on this level that the seeds of cohesiveness are sown. And it is time that determines whether the society reaps what it has sown or suffer the whirlwind in its disintegration.
It is the family that justifies our existence; it is the family that provides the raison d’etre for our being. Without the family, chaos and anarchy would prevail and our humanity recede into the abyss of crime and violence. And so the structures and sub-structures that directly and indirectly impact on the family in its singularity and plurality must at this time urgently orient their formal and informal exertions toward the elevation and sublimation of the family unit in its diversity.
The immediacy of our rather morbid, nefarious situation seems to be the formal and official preoccupation in dealing with this scourge of crime. That is a mistake. The church, writ large, is there: somewhat somnolent with a pathetic, ineffective and occasional gasp of energy and intent. It has failed us. It too is inexorably linked with the family and has a dynamic role to play in the formation and transformation of the family. To the mundane it adds a vital spiritual element in the creation of a society that gives salubrious expression to this communion of the spiritual and the secular. And by so being nullifies the propensity towards the commission of the sins of avarice and hubris. These two and for the greater part are the constitutive elements of criminal behaviour.
It is to be noted that the family of today is characteristically different to the family of yester year; and it is this difference that validates the position that our present society needs to be rehabilitated. The perception of that need emanates from a bygone era and casts doubt on the instrumentality of what is needed. For the paradox that confronts us is simply this: how can we rehabilitate that which has not been habilitated? And that is the crux of the problem as far as our criminogenic youth is concerned. They emanate from the family of today where the youth have a cognitive discernment of what is wrong and what is right: what is good and what is evil and what is vicious and what is benign.
But they do not have a moral sensitivity to that which is criminal and that which is not. There is a certain characterological dissonance between their moral sensibilities and their knowledge of good and evil. And so the alarming thing is that they have the intelligence but not the morality. And as it has been said in times past, intelligence and morals are ethical and an ethical being can make choices but among the choices are the things the deeds that he or she will not do.
And so when a youth of nineteen years shoots another in the balcony of his home, or a sixteen year old girl fatally stabs her friend on the school grounds that is not immorality; and when a youth shoots his drug partner that is not a matter of immorality; and when a youth (12 years – 30 years) shoots someone through the window of his passing car at a crowded rum-shop and in consequence thereof a patron is coerced into surrendering, rather untimely, his mortality, that is not immorality; and when a girl at a secondary school sits at the front of her class with her thighs apart, and smilingly gives her male teacher an unobstructed view of her titillating and fascinating possibilities, that is not a matter of immorality.
At this time, this age, this era these are not incidents of immorality. These are incidents emanating from within the bosom of our present-day family structure: The Family.
It is to be noted that immorality implies a certain grounding in moral values, moral dogmas, moral teachings that have become warped or tainted because of the negative vicissitudes of life; because of the struggles and conflicts between good and evil in a domestic, personal and thespian environment: the stage of life.
Immorality is the breakdown of one’s moral edifice, ones super-ego as they combat with the values-in-action of the society. It connotes the struggle passive or otherwise, with a residual consciousness of that which is good, positive wholesome, normative and sublime in ones social environment.
But then what we are faced with at this time, in this age, this era and in this place, and sine the “shift systems” is not immorality but AMORALITY. Amorality among the youth (12 to 30) years to now. And so a patent lack of conscience, be it social, spiritual or otherwise now defines the shift and quasi shift cohorts and the ensuing generation. THE FAMILY.
The management of the Past, Present and Future needs to be predicated on one sociological phenomenon that has been and is generating the whirlwind of Crime. This phenomenon is AMORALITY.
At this juncture it is to be noted that besides the family there are other elements to be harnessed in the resolution of this crisis of Crime. Some of these are the Church, the Police, the Unions, the Schools and all other community collectives.
The Collective Dynamic is the solution. “For no Man is an island entire of itself. Every man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for thee.
And I was led to believe that Saint Lucia had just one writer of laureate potential. Sir, I thank you for keeping folks like me, mentally sharpened and in constant readiness to expand our learning curve on real macro or micro nation-building topics. The amorality you illustrated would draw an agreeable nod from Pablo Picasso. History of the demise of the Imperial Roman Empire of Augustus and Julius also supports your diagnostic assessment of amorality.
Here is my farthing ana a hapeney proposal from your stimulating writing piece:
For the Family rehabilitation you elaborated on so eloquently, I propose novel isolation of the incarceration institution: What good is a Dennery location when one can continue to COO profit ledgers from communique carrier pigeon like, by visiting family, or smuggled cell phones?
Why not lease land in Amazonia via cents on the dollar, as per. membership in Pan American States Associations. New Bordelais located on the Atlantic coast of northern Brazil, free of wifi intercept and other easy access to criminal affiliations; allows for more Zen-like contemplation while serving time. Within this regard, a leveled trade or academic skill can be trained /taught to give the incarcerated a real legalized alternative towards a future civil livelihood.
Said penal colony can be designed to be fully sustainable. Satellite connectivity allows for the incarcerated to have lawyer sessions and court hearings in SSl secure virtual reality. Penal officers rotate on 3-month shifts.
All incarcerated participate in plant and animal husbandry for all food and nutrition needs. This is the only labor that is not compensated via stipend Al other labor should have a stipend that is banked for future withdrawal upon satisfactory completion of the sentence. The experimental framework of such an endeavor can be fashioned with minimum AI software technology. The potential for real rehabilitation is enormous at a fraction of the current costs on the island.
Even local marginalized indigenous folk can be trained to maintain perimeter infrastructure and security. It is a win for the host country which can reposition itself with cutting-edge reuse of vast tracts of wastelands, and unemployed indigenous groups.
Success for said pioneering foray means that Brazil can further design this model for all islands in the Caribbean and even some of the more stubborn overcrowding issues in Central America.
The criminal gets an opportunity, free from distractions/ familiar proximity temptations, to repurpose and acquire new tools for lawful participation upon reentry into society. Society and family get a distance to breathe deeply and amend or rehabilitate the amoral trajectory at the core of the dilemma/crisis.
Our well-heeled diplomats can negotiate the big picture of land leases and well-paid technocrats can milk the assistance of AI software in designing meaningful, purposeful, and well-protected penal colonies away from native lands.
Finally,I always get schooled from your writing, as if by my stoic headmaster “Red-Head” and class teacher Fedee, at former Castries boy’s primary school -adjacent to the Cathedral of Bishop Gachet’s tenure. In my boyhood, these significant other men impressed me with their sense of purpose and work ethic. Thankfully, we have you, Mr. Bousquet, Mr. Ismael, and other Voice contributing writers to keep our modern intellect in objective oscillation for positive nation-building outcomes.
I have yet to find a reading that so hits the very dendrites of this vicious cycle and its pathological socio-neural network.
MERCI!
Hillbillie, you have certainly found one essential panacea for the crime and murder pandemic that runs virulent in St. Lucia.
Hate the dog, but admit its flesh is white. A Russian who commits such heinous crimes ( as is rampant at home ) faces certain isolation in the harsh prisons of the bleak and frozen landscapes of Siberia.
If he is lucky to survive his sentence, those who look upon him get the message. He, also, has by then, been thoroughly purged of every criminal tendency and will avoid all contingencies that may threaten his freedom. The man is now thoroughly afraid of being sent to Siberia as a prisoner.
This generation is indeed, the generation of vipers. How does one control an infestation of vipers?
Already, they have been stripped of the essential elements of conscience and morality.
Therefore (you are right) it becomes necessary to separate the horde of criminals in a manner that compels them to face their demons without the aid of any accomplice; to feel every scintilla of their human vulnerability, and to arrive at the point where they understand and appreciate the value of human life.
This is no time for half baked programs of mercy for murderers. The time for an eye for an eye is now.
When a criminal kills with impunity, he should be killed with impunity before the whole community, without delay.
Any rehabilitation programs should be geared to the young generation who have slurped on the vomit fed them by society.
But who will teach them to eschew greed, materialism, and covetousness when the fox is in the henhouse?
Who? The police? The school? The church? The government? “chaaaaa!”
Who is sincerely speaking to the children?
Who is listening to their stories?
They are afraid, even as they hide behind this facade of false bravado. They do not want to be killed like a dog in the streets.
They know the viciousness of the gun and the bossman who lured them into this death spiral for a gold chain;
they find themselves between the beckoning arms of morality ( believe it or not, they have a conscience) and the dead enclosing wall of amontillado that holds them captive.
Who can find the babies, hide them in the bulrushes from drug dealers, whoremongers, human traffickers and the bossman?
Who can deliver the children before this 21st. Century Pharaoh gets to them.?
The family is beholden to the banks for the mortgage on th gros cai . The children have become their meal ticket
The church, today, is no longer in the business of looking for lost sheep.
And amorality, immorality and ethics are tied up in a Gordian knot in the Halls of governments with too few strong men to cut the knot.
Confusion is the hallmark of society all over the world. Man has lost his moorings.
Believe it or not, Hillbillie the ONE who created the world and mankind, HE has the panacea, for when HIS judgement is upon the earth man will learn Righteousness.
Hope always springs eternal. GOD save our island home.