THE Prime Minister said on Monday that crime will be treated as a public health emergency to deter youngsters, speaking at the briefing at the Diplomatic Centre St Ann's.
He said a new anti-crime plan is being formulated and that now was time for action.
Lamenting a dramatic escalation in crime, he lamented the "brazenness, boldfacedness and impunity" involving firearms, gangs and hired killers.
He said at the weekend's Cabinet retreat, he and Minister of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds had left Cabinet to meet Commissioner of Police Mc Donald Jacob plus defence force leaders. Rowley said he was satisfied the police, defence force and Strategic Services Agency (SSA) were all at work.
Lamenting crime was fuelled by illegal quarrying, he promised to curb such activities.
"It is the Government's intention to declare violent crime as a public health issue."
The effort will be led by the permanent secretaries of the Ministries of Social Development and Health, and involve the Office of the Prime Minister, police service, Tobago House of Assembly and Ministries of National Security, Sport and Education.
He said work has begun, by way of talks and document gathering.
Rowley promised to develop a national plan of action, driven by a public health approach, to define the problem.
"We'll identify the causes and the risk factors. We'll design a response and we will test the interventions that we are going to make and we will implement and scale up the effective interventions and we will support continuous evaluation.
"The objective here is to enter the youth population at various levels and to begin a line of education which should steer people away from participation or being desensitised by crime and criminal activities." He hoped to "generate a wave of people" who would reject crime at the level of their own person, home, school and community.
"We will in short be preparing a better citizenry.
"We are operationalising a response to what is in effect a crisis. "
He said the Health Ministry and others will advise and engage the public.
Rowley said Caricom countries will pool resources towards tacking this problem.
Newsday asked about his hopes for this initiative compared to the 2013 Prof Selwyn Ryan Report, No Time To Quit: Engaging Youth At Risk, plus the 2020 Community Recovery Programme led by Dr Anthony Watkins to curb discrimination, lawlessness, hurt and anger, in at-risk communities.
The PM replied, "I'm not talking about reports. I'm talking about action.
"One of the things we want to do is train our young people in a way that they will be guided away from a violent life and a violent future, as victims or perpetrators."
Newsday asked about the parameters of the initiative, such as the influence of family-breakdown, boy scouts and church.
He said the diverse ministries would each make their input into addressing the challenges at the level of an individual child, school, household and police district.
"Is there anything we can do? What is the nature of the problem?
"It
