Early Childhood Education is the key to “Ward-Off” Adolescent Criminal Actions

When the Commissioner of police announced that 875 crimes were committed by children between the ages of 15 and 17 between 2019 and 2022, and the makeup of these crimes are murders, shootings, rapes, break-ins, robberies, and aggravated assaults, the act of collecting and reporting these statistics is TOO LATE. When the National Parenting Supporting Commission (NPSC) recognizes that 92% of parents in our country don’t know how to communicate with children effectively, this recognition is TOO LATE. Further, When the general public only recently recognized that children learn primarily by observing, listening, and modeling behavior and that those learnings can mainly be bad for children and the future of our country, it’s TOO LATE. Finally, when the Prime Minister announced that Jamaica needs a compulsory national service system to “ward off” youth from turning to criminal activities, he too was TOO LATE in his thinking. These are the stories in the news announced by leaders in the past week. The work should have started from the early childhood years of the children.

The question is, do you now see why STAISTA ranks Jamaica as the 2nd most dangerous country in the world in 2022 with 43.85 murders in every 100,000 inhabitants? Jamaica ranks second to El Salvador at 52.02. Based on the announcement of the Commissioner of Police, young children are emerging criminals, and indications are that efforts are inadequate in resolving the issue in the early years of the children. Most say…