Le Brésil propose la stratégie du Bel-Air pour combattre le crime à la Jamaique

Jamaica Gleaner Online
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Brazil youth focus may hold answer to Jamaica's crime problem
published: Thursday | May 8, 2008
Mark Beckford, Staff Reporter

A multidimensional strategy including a strong emphasis on improved police-community relations has been credited for Brazil's success in curbing crime in its second largest city.

The anti-crime push - which is also hinged on rehabilitating troubled youths and seizing guns from the streets - has been critical to Cesar Rubem battling lawlessness in his native Rio de Janeiro.

"Our work has tried to look at these three components - working with young people, gun reduction and gun control, and you must have police action if you want to control guns," he told The Gleaner Tuesday.

GUN CRIMES
Rubem, founder and executive secretary of the non-governmental group Viva Rio, has seen some of the worst forms of gun crimes and juvenile deviancy. However, he has been able to effect change in Brazil and Jamaica's neighbour Haiti, a Caribbean nation wracked by endemic poverty, widespread illiteracy and political upheaval.

Rio and Jamaica's cities share similar experiences on the subject of crime and violence. In 2006, Jamaica, with a population of 2.6 million, tolled 1,340 murders. Rio, with more than six million persons, in the same year tallied 2,273 deaths.

Violent crime in both countries is fuelled by a jigsaw puzzle of urban shantytowns teeming with unemployed youth, some of whom are wooed by gangs. In Jamaica, they are called ghettos; Brazil dubs them favelas. The use of small firearms figures prominently as the weapon of choice in both countries.

Rubem, who is in Jamaica as a guest of the United Nations Development Programme and the Violence Prevention Alliance, shared some of the strategies his organisation has pursued in taming the crime monster in Brazil's former capital.

"We have a lot of gun violence in Brazil, very, very tough, especially in Rio de Janeiro. The main issue is that you have a combination of community control and drug dealing. The control comeswith guns and the money comes from the drug dealing."

Rubem told The Gleaner that since his organisation's inception in 1993, it has been able to help more than 100,000 marginalised youths through its programmes. He also said the state had adopted the idea of helping dropouts and juvenile delinquents reintegrate into society.

Out of school
"Young people who have dropped out of school, if you are in school you can still make a career, a strategy of life. When you drop out of school, you are out, and unless you have studied, it is hard to go to the labour market," the activist pleaded.

Rubem is also a firm believer in negotiating with gangsters and providing incentives in order to reduce crime. This approach, he said, was used in Haiti to great effect.

His organisation approached gang leaders and offered them 30 scholarships a month for children in the five warring sections through a lottery system.

Viva Rio also offered an extra training incentive for gang leaders if they held to an agreement to ensure that no violence was committed over a two-month period. They have held to that commitment since May 2007.

"We managed to facilitate a peace accord among gang leaders in Bel-Air in the centre of Port-au- Prince (Haiti's capital) and that was very surprising for us since that has been achieved, it is possible to negotiate peace."

In terms of gun control, Rubem has pointed to the Disarmament Statute and the gun amnesty in his country between July 2004 and October 2005 which yielded more than 500,000 guns.

Gun ownership
The Disarmament Statute has several limitations with gun ownership. These include the right to own a gun but not carry it in public, and strict conditions on gun licence issuance. Also, all ammunition must be traceable.

A person who is under 25 years old cannot own a gun, and civilians are prohibited from purchasing semi-automatic and automatic guns for personal use. Rubem also said that gun convictions carried a minimum sentence of four years.

mark.beckford@gleanerjm.com



Cesar Rubem, executive secretary of Viva Rio, says targeting high-school dropouts is critical to addressing crime. - Ian Allen/Staff Photographer


Copyright Jamaica-Gleaner.com

On many occasions I read the initiatives the police and the judicial authorities are taking to combat delinquency and crimes in poor neighborhoods of poor countries like Haiti ,jamaica, trinidad etc. Rarely I read about a program like the one in Venezuela where the youth has a symphonic orchestra in different cities.I never read an apprenticeship program where the young people can learn a trade or a profession.

We all know that the penitenciary system doesn't rehabilitate our young criminals.On the contrary most of them become hard core criminals after serving their first sentence.Why then these governments do not build more vocational schools in these poor neighborhoods where the young people can learn trades like plumbing,electrician, air conditionning, cabinet makers, carpentry,nurses, lab technology etc?

When one look at the poor conditions people are living in these countries one wonders why these young people can not build better houses for themeselves and their families , hospitals , schools,theaters,roads, play grounds, etc.I do not think these young criminals can not be rehabilitated ,it is up to the governments to create programms to encourage them to becomne responsible citizens.There are so many needs in these countries why the unemployment rate is so high? A group of charlatans are proclaming their knowledge as economists ,sociologists etc , but when I consider the state of abject proverty that the majority of the people of the world are living ,I am wondering wehether these so called experts know really How to solve the economics problems of these poor countries.

We are all not born equal as far as talents are concerned.Some people are talented and smart enough to become lawyers, doctors, engineers. ,others can be as useful to their country if given a chance to become good tehnicians,good superintendants, good carpenters, good brick layers,good farmers.etc.we all need a place to sleep.we all need to eat, when we're old we need some people to take care of us.The youth is the future of the country.We should pay more attention to their well being instead of thinking only about building jails to encage them like animals.