By Peter Polack

Peter Polack

The Caribbean has been repeatedly rocked by incidents of mass killing without progress by society in dealing with the root causes. No government reviews, budget allocations or serious strategy implementation to reverse a dangerous progression among young men. 

Young women are not drawn to this behavior.

Information rewards, token second chances or expungement simply will not do.

It is a placebo for the ignorant when wider, deeper problems come knocking at businesses and innocent members of society, usually late at night, violently.

Several criminologists have identified missing fathers as a core cause in the actions of mass murderers who are usually single actors. The Caribbean has been beset with multiple actors in mass killing incidents from a gang or drug perspective, also similar to elsewhere.

The partial reasoning behind this frequent and often unhappy end to the life of young men, by prison or death, is the lack of a present father in the formative years to provide guidance, mentoring and direction. 

In the absence of a father, it is the job of society at large to step in and fill this large vacuum even partially. The government cannot accomplish this and it has mostly been concerned with the incarceration management of an ever increasing part of the population, disenfranchised and abandoned young men.

Society is part of the cure but it is not at fault. Individuals who run from responsibility come in all forms, even policemen, lawyers and judges. The very same who are at the end of a pipeline of iniquity.

Society will have to embrace at risk youth and governments must put resources with designated departments to deal with this growing problem.

Like finance,public works and tourism, at risk youth must become a dedicated part of future governance, hand in hand with a mobilized society.

Who feels it, will know it.

Peter Polack is a former criminal lawyer from the Cayman Islands for several decades. His books are The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (2013), Jamaica, The Land of Film (2017) and Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution (2019). He was a contributor to Encyclopedia of Warfare (2013). His latest book is a compendium of Russian espionage activities with almost five hundred Soviet spies expelled from nearly 100 countries worldwide 1940-88. 

His views are his own.