Stanley Mahase, a former principal of a primary school in Laventille, said his experience there revealed to him that many young men see joining gangs and engaging in violence as a sign of masculinity. He said social programmes aimed at youth often do not reach the ones who really need them.
Mahase was speaking at the regional symposium on crime on Tuesday during a session on education and youth.
While he opted not to name the school, he said during his 20 years as principal there, he engaged in a violence reduction programme which required collecting data from nearby communities.
He said the school was surrounded by the bases of three rival gangs, and based on his data, "We on the outside see things differently...I got a shock when I went in there.
"The way masculinity is constructed in the gang communities is much different to how we see it."
Very often, he said, guns are seen as "symbols of power," so violence is a main marker of masculinity.
"The boys aspire to it, the girls subscribe to it and submit to it."
His comments were cut short until it was announced that a request was made for him to finish his contribution.
He thanked the panel, saying, "We from Morvant/Laventille, we never really get a fair chance to be heard and that is a part of the problem we have. The people who know what is going on are not heard."
He said he is very passionate about helping young people and that efforts at the school are continuing to quell violence.
"Some of the programmes we have been using like the police youth clubs, they have not reached the most at-risk boys because the boys cannot go to the youth club.
"Yes, they (the programmes) are good but they must be better targeted, they must be reconfigured to reach those people."
He suggested speaking more to those who had attempts made to recruit them into gangs but chose not to.
He said there needed to be targeted teaching on how manhood was defined.
"We see from the outside the gang leader is a criminal terrorist, but within the community, he is what you call a hegemony. He is one who the community sees has a right to rule and to be obeyed."
He said many young men then admired those people.
He said values and education could not be the only effort to stop this.
Renee Atwell, dean of the Caricom Youth Ambassador Corps said the Caribbean was facing a crisis of crime, "which seeped into our communities, infecting our youth, stealing our lives and shattering our dreams."
She said she refused to accept the "normalisation of crime" and would not sit idly by.
She suggested mentorship, quality education, conflict resolution strategies, among other things.
Dr Malisa Neptune-Figaro, criminologist and lecturer in the Department of Behavioural Sciences at the UWI, St Augustine said, based on her research, many youths had turned to violence because of unaddressed trauma as well as a lack of socio-economic opportunities.
She said many y
