A rising number of teenage offenders are entering Dodds prison, with Superintendent of Prisons DeCarlo Payne warning on Thursday that the age of convicted inmates is steadily dropping and that youngsters were committing more serious, violent crimes.
Highlighting what he described as a worrying trend in an interview with Barbados TODAY, the prison chief said more young males between the ages of 15 and 25 are now being incarcerated for serious crimes, particularly gun-related offences.
Superintendent Payne said the development reflected deeper social issues that required a collective national response.
“The age range is going down,” he said. “We’re seeing inmates as young as 15 or 16. The trend is more violent, with many crimes involving firearms and robberies.”
Criminologist and criminal psychologist Kirk Alleyne also noted a disturbing behavioural shift: a growing reliance on violence to settle interpersonal disputes.
“There is a growing tendency to resolve interpersonal disputes through violence rather than through dialogue, mediation, or legal means,” he observed in a July report, Confronting Violent Crime in Barbados: Understanding the Root Causes and Breaking the Cycle of Violence. “We must confront the fact that retaliatory responses and violent escalation have become normalised.”
Of the 31 murders for the year to July, 10 involved methods other than firearms, a statistic Alleyne said underscores that violent behaviour on the island goes beyond the issue of gun control.
Alleyne’s observations on gang activity are equally concerning. He notes a transition from informal street groups to well-organised criminal networks that operate like corporations, complete with defined hierarchies and specific roles.
The criminologist expressed deep concern about the increasing accessibility of firearms to juveniles. “The dangers are magnified when firearms become easily accessible, particularly to juveniles,” he said. “When young individuals obtain weapons, the likelihood of them becoming involved in serious criminal activities – such as armed robberies, home invasions, and shootings – increases significantly.”
Barbados has recorded at least 34 homicides for the year. This figure includes seven in January, 13 between January and March, 19 by the end of May, 28 by the end of June, and 31 by the end of July.
But Superintendent Payne said there are programmes for both the remanded and sentenced individuals in its programming. “We treat the convicted individuals in terms of rehabilitative programming differently from the ones that are remanded,” said the prison chief. “For the remanded mates, we do a lot of religious programming, anger management interventions, drug counselling, those types of things, because those are the things that you will need to address first before you really get deeper into the rehabilitative focus of those individuals.
“So it’s more… what we’ll say is more of these types of mind-altering or mind-shifting types of interventions that we are focusing on those young people.”
The developments among young offenders come as the Barbados Prison Service observes a month of activities to promote educational, vocational and rehabilitative programmes for inmates, including religious services, skills workshops and media training, aimed at reducing reoffending and preparing young offenders for reintegration into society.
louriannegraham@barbadostoday.bb
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