Gangs crippled
Published:Wednesday | March 23, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Safe Schools Programme gets credit in Old Capital
Karen Sudu, Gleaner Writer
SPANISH TOWN, St Catherine:
WITH THE advent of the Safe Schools Programme (SSP) in 2004, came several strategies to address the increasing incidents of violence in troubled institutions.
So far, the initiative implemented by the Ministry of Education has been producing positive outcomes for one school located in the heart of Jamaica's first capital.
Subsequent to two gang wars involving male students affiliated with major gangs operating out of the Old Capital, the programme was implemented at Spanish Town High School in March 2010. Dean of Discipline Loretta Collins credited the programme to the reduction of gang-related activities among the 2,500 student population at the shift-operated institution.
Intervention and mediation
"It is not as bad because a lot of intervention and mediation have been done with help of resource persons from outside such as ministers from local churches and motivational speakers from other schools. The gangs are not as organised as before. However, there are still remnants that are closely supervised," Collins explained.
Nineteen School Resource Officers (SROs) have been placed at the 12 schools under the SSP in the St Catherine North police division for which Corporal Kevin Marsh has been the programme coordinator, since inception. He hints that gang-related activities are not unique to Spanish Town High School.
"When we first started in Spanish Town, we had some very serious problems in schools, gang-related activities were rampant. Spanish Town is known for gang-related activities and the schools were no different, all the gangs that were in the large communities were replicated in some of the schools," Marsh said.
He indicated, however, that the SROs have managed to reduce these activities significantly.
"One of our major successes is a cadet unit that we have implemented in all these schools. These youngsters when we identify that they might be affiliating themselves with gangs, they are directed into the cadet programme as an alternative, and we see where this is working significantly," Marsh added that 70 students at Spanish Town High School are a part of the cadet programme.
Meanwhile, Collins has also given the programme high marks for its impact on the reduction of fights involving weapons, as well as anti-social behaviour and truancy. Likewise, she said the use of metal detectors, which are given to each institution under SSP, has been effective.
"It helps to detect concealed weapons in underclothing and it eliminates touching students in personal areas. More detectors are needed, one for each school is not enough," Collins said.
At the nearby St Jago High School, Antoinette Wright-Dallen, senior teacher and dean of discipline, said the Monk Street institution had not experienced any major disturbances.
"We will have fights but we rarely have cases of wounding or destruction of property. It might be some little dispute and it's a matter of more mediation than anything else," she told The Gleaner.
On the other hand, Wright-Dallen said while students complied with the school's rules for the most part, administrators still have to contend with other challenges.
"The biggest problem we have would be with the uniform and the whole thing of the tight-pants culture. We had managed to eradicate bleaching but it's coming back in courtesy of cake-soap phenomenon. We are clamping down on it now."
She explains that rehabilitation forms part of the punishment meted out to students who fail to conform to rules.
She added, "In terms of like weapons possession, we'd do searches, we have a metal detector, but we will maybe find one or two with maybe a knife or an ice pick and it would be rare," Dallen-Wright explained.
Unlike, Spanish Town High, St Jago has not been assigned an SRO.