Dickson Igwe. Photo: VINO/File

Juvenile delinquency can be defeated however. It can be defeated through community intervention early in the life of the child, especially the areas of cognition, and learning. Add to that mix, corrective education.

Education, specifically corrective education, is the most effective way of dealing with the juvenile delinquency beast, especially when deviancy has become a ‘damaging feature’ late in a child’s life. Interventions such as counseling and mental treatment are critical, but they are supportive to the education process, which is the key tool in the fight against juvenile deviancy.

This third story on the matter assesses juvenile deviancy by viewing systemic factors. It begins with a contribution from a prominent Canadian Educator.

Paul Strome is a Canadian Educator and Environmentalist. Strome and his wife Joanne live in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The couple are a regular feature at the Nanny Cay Resort and Marina, British Virgin Islands. The Stromes own a charming yacht moored at Nanny Cay: PAS DU FAKE. The Stromes have become great friends of this Columnist and his family.

For decades, Strome has been at the cutting edge of a Canadian education model that stresses the leisure component as crucial to effective learning and positive outcomes. Strome, now retired, has also worked on a leisure prototype in his northern homeland that empowers youth through various outdoor activities. He spent years in the Arctic and Polar Regions of Canada, educating and empowering native populations in the area.

Strome is powerfully built jocular man. He is a gentle giant, with a great sense of humour. He is also an advocate for numerous social causes in Canada and around the world. Strome is a man with an egalitarian streak: he is obsessed with the ideals of freedom, justice, and equity. He is a community minded type, and a man who clearly loves these Virgin Islands. He is an avid yachtsman and outdoorsman. He and his lovely wife Joanne spend nearly half their time in these Antilles sailing the archipelago.

Strome offered this piece of advice on Social media on Sunday, April 13, 2014.  It alluded to an aspect of the juvenile delinquency matter that may have been overlooked: the matter of wealth inequalities in the British Virgin Islands. Strome stated, ‘’ there is more than one side to this story.’’

‘’A lot of people in the BVI are poor. Yet the poor see immense wealth around them and they want to get ahead. Poverty means that tourists, citizens and taxpayers will continue to be faced with the issue of juvenile criminality.’’

The question, whether social and wealth inequality, is a factor in Virgin Islands juvenile delinquency, was not considered in this researcher’s juvenile delinquency project at the Hamilton Lavitty Stoutt Community College. His research showed however, that juvenile deviancy was found mostly in socially deprived neighbourhoods, where family dysfunction was the norm.

OK. The BVI presently possesses a top down economic model. This is a model that places power and wealth at the top of the social pyramid, to be dispensed at the whims of the wealthy and powerful. It is a model that is global, and driven by US culture.

In the US, digital technology and scientific innovation, have engineered a knowledge economy that has created a super wealthy elite. The USA today is the most socially unequal of the developed economies. 1 % of the US population owns nearly half the entire wealth of the nation. And the trajectory points to greater inequality in the future. This Observer does not think this growing economic inequality is socially sustainable.

A return to the early 1900s, a throwback to when a handful of families controlled all the wealth of the USA, will show that historically, when inequality grows exponentially, there is usually a social and political response to make the playing field more even. In extreme cases this may mean revolution. More likely, it means a political rebalancing where center left parties take power and attempt to reverse the inequality trend by greater public investment, and taxing the wealthy.

This may already be happening in the USA with a growing call for economic policies that favour the poor and middle class, and a new built in political weighting driven by demography, that is working for the Democratic Party, and that may keep the Democrats in power for a generation. 

The US economic model post the 1980s has been driven by information science and advanced technology. It is an economics that has concentrated wealth in the hands of a billionaire class. These super wealthy are a global class, although the majority are US citizens. They exist on all the continents, and essentially own the planet.

It is often stated that 50 families, or less than 200 people, own more wealth than 3 billion people at the bottom half of the global wealth pyramid, or half the world’s population.

In the USA, a majority of instances of juvenile delinquency are found in poor and socially deprived areas. These juvenile delinquents frequently populate US prisons when they become adults.  

Yes, consigning a significant part of society to hopelessness and poverty will create juvenile deviancy. Increased deviancy at the bottom of the socio economic pyramid should not come as a surprise.

To be continued...

Dickson Igwe is a current affairs columnist. He is a scholar of strategy and leadership. Connect with Dickson Igwe on FACEBOOK and TWITTER. Email Dickson Igwe at dicksonresearch@gmail.com