Basseterre, St. Kitts, April 19, 2023 (ZIZ Newsroom): Prime Minister the Hon. Dr. Terrance Drew says St. Kitts and Nevis will be taking a multi-pronged approach to the recent upsurge in crime in the Federation.
During a roundtable discussion with the media on Wednesday afternoon the Prime Minister said coming out of the regional symposium in Trinidad and Tobago on Violence in the region one of the approaches would be to intervene at the early childhood level.
He said “A damaged child becomes a dangerous adult, and so the evidence has shown that if you intervene early with a number of evidence-based approaches, you can really solve the problem.
I called the Minister of Education, Hon. Dr. Geoffrey Henley, the Deputy Prime Minister,
and asked him to put in place quickly, a task was to look at making preschool accessible for all of our preschoolers.”
He added “Because the earlier we intervened, the more success we will have, and also to look at child care for children who are not yet preschool-age, but need to have the opportunity to be in a wholesome environment, because the research showed up between 0 and 5 if you get it right, it is very unlikely you’ll get it wrong after that.”
Dr. Drew said there must also be an effort to reach out to the gang members and establish some sort of mediation.
He said “We are also pursuing active engagement among those who are in these organizations to deal with it from a mediation standpoint as well. So we are looking at it, dealing with it from a mediation standpoint, but also (using) robust police tactics to detect. And to make sure we work hard to get the guns off the streets and those who we know are involved in criminal activities; to make sure that we do the policing that we have to.”
The Prime Minister also commended the security forces for the efforts in launching Operation Reassurance.
“The security forces have responded positively and to some extent proactively as well, and they have put into place Operation Reassurance. And I want to thank the Commission of Police, Commissioner Sutton, and of course the command of the Defense Force, Comrie, who have been working closely together along with the other agencies to ensure that we have a systematic approach to deal with the current situation, and I think that the approach is yielding results,” he said.
According to the police, Operation Reassurance will see the various departments of the security forces stepping up their day to day operations, and police officers increasing their presence in the communities.
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