Editorial | New route to values campaign

Prime Minister Andrew Holness stands on firm ground in his wish to expand, and make compulsory, participation in the Jamaica National Service Corps. He says, however, his goal is not affordable at this time.

Mr Holness may be right about the prohibitive cost of the plan as currently conceived. Nonetheless, what it is intended to achieve is so important that it cannot wait until the Government is able to “grow the Budget” sufficiently to accommodate its implementation in the existing format. The administration, therefore, has to be creative, seeking cheaper ways of working towards the same end until the ideal can be met.

In that regard, in parallel with the Jamaica National Service Corps (JNSC), which is managed by the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF), the administration might consider a slimmed-down version of the scheme by making it a compulsory element of Jamaica's school curricula for all students between grades seven and 13. In that sense, it would become part of an enhanced civics course, which would lay great emphasis on the promotion of values and attitudes (by whatever name called), community participation, and the building of trust.

Under the JNSC, several hundred young people, between 18 and 23, are recruited annually to undergo a modified version of the JDF's basic training, including learning employable skills. Since the programme's launch in 2017, it has largely been used by the army as its channel for recruiting full-time soldiers.

Prime Minister Holness has consistently talked about expanding the JNSC as a way to build discipline among young people, and to deny criminal gangs potential recruits from among swathes of youth who are without jobs and lack education or training. The targeted cohort is also the one from which most perpetrators and victims of Jamaica's crisis of criminal violence (1,498 homicides in 2022) come.

Said Mr Holness in a speech last week: “Had I my own way in the expenditure of the Budget, I would make it compulsory for all unattached males to be enlisted in the Jamaica National Service Corps for two years. It is a very expensive venture, but I guarantee you it would cut violence significantly.”

YOUNG WOMEN, TOO

It is indeed young males who are most at risk from Jamaica's culture of violence, but women are far from insulated against it. They are increasingly victims of gun murders.

Mr Holness has not given a specific figure of the young men he would expect to recruit annually for the JNSC, but government labour market data suggest that approximately 187,000 males in the 14 to 24 age group are outside the labour force. It would not be unreasonable to assume that around half of those were 'unattached', in that they were neither in education or training institutions nor in jobs.

With respect to females, approximately 196,000 of the same age cohort were outside the labour force last June. However, the school dropout rate tends to be lower among females, and more women than men seek tertiary education or other forms of post-high-school training.

In any event, having dealt with the initial bump in the starting period of the expansion, the management of the intake is likely to be easier in future years.

Mr Holness' concern about the budgetary impact of quickly bringing tens of thousands of young men into a uniformed, discipline-building and skills-training scheme is understandable, but it would be useful if he provided a broader, comparative economic analysis of the venture and the social value reform. That might help to shift priorities in the allocation of resources.

For example, by some estimates, crime and violence snips around five per cent annually from Jamaica's gross domestic product (GDP), an estimated J$100 billion. It would cost a fraction of that to expand the JNSC, with the return, according to the prime minister, of cutting “violence significantly”. Would it be feasible, in the circumstance, to allocate some of the money currently allocated to other areas of national security to this project?

POLITICAL PARTNERSHIP

At the same time, Mr Holness' idea for the JNSC ought not to be separate from a broader national programme for the rebuilding of kinship with the obligations and values of citizenship, similar to what the former prime minister, P.J. Patterson, attempted in his Values and Attitudes initiative nearly three decades ago.

Unfortunately, political trolls ridiculed Mr Patterson's initiative into failure. Sadly, nearly 29 years after the project's collapse, succeeding administrations have still been unable to rehabilitate the idea from the derision that caused its death.

There is, however, an opportunity for Mr Holness to not only accelerate the expansion of the JNSC, but to finally exorcise ghosts that haunt any initiative carrying the label of 'values and attitudes'.

These issues should be made part of the agenda of the Vale Royal Talks between the prime minister and the opposition leader, Mark Golding. It is an area on which they can easily find consensus.

Mr Holness should think of them as being among his legacy projects, but ones in which he shares the achievements with Mr Golding as part of a political partnership to get them done – including agreement for their sustained funding and joint oversight.