The parents unanimously agreed that environment does not affect their children behaviour. All the parents were mothers, who reside in Tivoli Gardens, Lizard Town and close proximity to Denham Town. These parents were mostly ‘hustling’. Their social arrangements were predominantly visiting relationships with none of them still being intimate with the child’s father. They argued that they observed behavioural changes in the child after seeing his/her father. Ms. Bennett (pseudo name) remarked that “di bwoy behaviour himself and do school wuk after him see him fadda.” Ms. Russell concurred with the statement that her daughter is a “gem after she see fi har fadda.” Despite the clear indication of the separation anxiety and the behavioural changes due to father-child bonding, they argued that the absent father did not affect the children. On the other hand, they revealed that the children would listen to their fathers’ reprimand than that of their. It is evident that the presence of the father improves children’s behaviour but mothers deny the impact of the absence of the children’s fathers.

The clear cry for support came from all the parents in respect of assistance in addressing the behaviour problems of the general populace, and Mrs. Carthwright expressed this same sentiment. The ignorance of the parents was evident. They were all unable to amalgamate the social-political and geographical environment and the behavioural disorders of the child. Ms. Russell remarked that her daughter was not an indisciplined child but did not “school work”. She said, “Hyacinth never has home wuk ar noting fi do, Fi School.” Despite Hyacinth close proximity to the school’s premises; she does not joint any activities that would see her remaining at school after dismissal. The same institution educated all the parents, and they believed that the teachers do not exhibit any respect for either them or the children. On the other hand, the new Principal was considered ‘coarse’ but understanding and emphatic toward their concerns but this is never the first impression that she gives.

The parents argued that while the old Principal was ‘nice’, she allowed many of the teachers too much mileage to carry out their own agendas. One parent remarked that under the stewardship of the old Principal “many teachers did not attend school, teach their classes or showed any interest in the children, and so the new Principal’s change of focus has resulted in a number of teachers resigning in the process”. Then there is the issue of the deep divide between the academic staffers. As some teacher support, the Vice Principal who they claimed was sidelines for an outside Principal. This psychosocial divide is known by all but the parents believed that this is not an element within the depression experienced by the students. The writhe is so intense that some persons are forwarding a perspective that the Principal stand for discipline yet still she is not married with child.

All the parents acknowledged their incapacity to afford the necessary provision for their child because of the lack of employment but felt that this mildly affected the children’s behaviour. They argued financial constraints affect their ability to provide breakfast, sometimes dinner and other meals throughout the day. Another area with finances was the limited number of instructional materials that were made available to students from the institution through the Ministry of Education, and the parents being unable to sufficient provide textbook where the Ministry falls short.

The parents forwarded the perspective that the girls are equally traumatized as the boys. They agreed that the boys must be mindful of “falling prey to gangs, drugs, murders, exploitations and fear” whereas the girls must be concerned with molestation, rape and murders. Mrs. Carthwright forged the argument that while no gun violence occurred on the school’s compound, there have been a number of rapes and molestations. Other parents were tight lipped but concurred with Mrs. Carthwright that many of the female students are highly psychologically traumatized from the socio-geographical conditions of their lives. They pointed out that number of the girls live alone and so do the boys, and the few of the girls are involved in adults social arrangements.

Students’ enrolment was rather unique as many pupils would not regularly attend school but do so on examination periods. The parents cited that students are extremely mobile, and they would follow a social confrontation irrespective of having work to carry out while in class. This was not seen has totally negative but the willingness of students to skip class at the least sign of physical confrontation. Despite the high rate of incidence of enrolment in schools for pupils ages 12-14 and 15 through 16, low school enrolment plagues the institution on occasions when there are gang violence, market days, Christmas seasons and other holiday’s seasons approaching. The enrolment of Jamaican students ages 17 through 19 is highly problematic, and this is typical in Denham Town High School (see Appendix 1-C).

The parents spoke of a number of psychological conditions their children, and the general school populace. The children were defined as high compulsive, aggressive, agitated, intolerance, fearful, distrusting and ‘cruel’. One argument was that the students will “fight, for fight sake” and in the process seeks to malign and physical hurt another in the anticipation that that child would have wanted to have done the same. One parent alluded to the children being animals just waiting for a prey to devour it. In approximately ten minutes while observing a colleague conducting a focus group of students, group of boys who had a metalwork class had an altercation. The researcher witnessed a young man of about fifteen years drew an object like an ice pick from his waistband and attack a classmate. The classmate had an implement shaped like a triangle from metal sheeting. On investigating the issues surrounding the incident, the researcher discovered that the general boys accused the lone outsider of the area of being an informant. They believed that this was tantamount to blasphemy, and is so punishable by death. None of the other classmate thought it fitting to dispel an impending problem that might escalate or even contemplate the issue of incarceration in the even of a fatal stabbing.

The parents spoke to the low self-esteem of the students, attributed this to the surrounding, which include the poor sanitation, the inadequate water supply and electrification, waste management system, and the general aesthetic of the physical setting. One writer summed this up perfectly by saying:

The low-income households inhabiting the peri-urban settlements live in the most polluted and inaccessible areas, frequently at risk from flooding and landslides, or in areas contaminated with wastes. With uncertain or illegal land tenure, these low-income, high density settlements lack the most basic infrastructure and services. It is now increasingly recognized that the challenge of attaining the goals of the Habitat Agenda will have to be primarily met in these peri-urban settlements (Ray, 2001).

The students of Denham Town High School within their socio-economic background have to interface voluminous psychosocial issues, and the challenge must be conceptualized in order to grasp the complexities of their world in an attempt to provide them with technical assistance. The issues facing the people of within the communities of Denham Town are multi-spatial, and so must be researched in a multidimensional approach as the level of depression challenges them beyond simple understanding. This situation may be a social hindrance to learning, training and may explain of the students deviant behaviours. It is the multiplicity of psychosocial issues that are influencing the lives of these children must be explored in order to make them see the peace in nature and other events (see Appendix 1-D).

The parents are polarized on an issue that their children are so distant from the physical and social surroundings that they are not affected by the killings, the gunshots, the brutality, the lack of social opportunities, the labeling by the external publics, the low expectations of them and the pressure placed on them to survive within the social space. The mothers alluded to high intensity of fear of the unexpected in regards to sporadic violence but felt their children were able eliminate themselves from the happenings around them, and concentrate on the issues at hand. Mrs. Russell commented that her children knew what to do in the even of an outburst of gang violence but felt, the children cope effectively in the space. She was unable to amalgamate the physical experience (i.e. the “running belly”) of the son with the psychological state of the child on hearing gun shot in addition to his low grades in school and his periodic disruptive and deviant behaviour.

None of the parents was willing to address the issue of the typology of punishment for social deviance. They felt that what must be done has to be done for the benefit of the child. The researcher gathered from the authoritative style of leadership of the parents that the child/ren was flogged as a medium of correcting behavioural problems. This was not viewed as another mechanism of brutality to which the traditional corrective approach was only fueling the same behaviour that it seeks to address.

The teachers have a difficulty comprehending the students’ rationale for not wanting to abide by their principles, guidelines, morals, norms, culture and perspective. The students, on the other hand, recognize that their teachers are not as socially advanced as singers such as Bob Marley from Trench Town, Rodney “Bounti Killa” Price from Seaview Gardens, and these were not educated and did to advance themselves through education. Still they have attained recognition, wealth, power, and some degree of social acceptance unlike being a teacher. The students believe that their teachers’ social attainment cannot be compared with those of entertainers (who lived in the community at some point in their lives such as Gregory Isaacs, Peter Tosh, Mark “Buju Banton” Myrie) who are predominantly less educated. This is an aspect of the students’ psyche that is not understood their teachers. Their mentors are the dons with the “prestigious vehicles”, the killers with the “beautiful girls and the flashy life style”, the entertainers who sport the “expensive cars, bikes, clothing, jewels and the ‘Uptown’ women”. This is one the psychosocial difficulties faced by students, while they seek to charge their present setting. The social reality is Robert “Bob” Marley is more influential, affluent, renowned and less educated than the teachers to which this is known by the students of Denham Town High. The students are faced with a continuous conflict of value system within the context of their limitations, and they are measuring the sub-cultures (i.e. the smoking of marijuana, having many women, sporting prestigious cars and clothing) and the culture in an effort to finalize on a pathway for themselves.

Summary of Focus Group Discussion

One of the consensuses that arose from the discussion with the parents is their limited perspective of stress, depression and determinants that influence a child’s cognition and behaviour. The mothers felt that children are not necessarily stressed, and so they are able to devoid themselves of their socio-geographical space. The perspective generated from the discourse was of females, and so may reflect the opinions of mothers. On the other hand, females who were in visiting relationships care for in excess of eighty percent of the students. Hence, the arguments from the perspective of the primary caregivers despite all being females is still the observation ideal stakeholder.

Studies concluded that young people in contemporary society experience a plethora of stressors. Strom, Oguinick & Singer (1995) in a research on approximately 2500 youth from urban, suburban and small city settings reveal the characterization of the issues that pressure young people. The stressors that young people mentioned were “the presence of violence, drugs and alcohol in their lives, pressures they experience from peers, hostility toward other racial groups, confusions about sexual involvement and fears of pregnancy and disease, concern about family members, and the difficulty in relying upon adults as sources of support and guidance" (p. 355). Other studies corroborated these experiences, pointing to high rates of aggression, substance abuse, teen-pregnancy, high school dropout and communicable diseases among youth. (Barton, Watkins, & Jarjoura, 1997; Bearman, Jones, & Udry, 1997; Dupper & Poertner, 1997; Luster & Small, 1994; Strom, Oguinick & Singer, 1995; Sussman et al., 2002; Weist et al., 1995; Weist et al., 2000).

Then, there is the situation of the divisiveness between school personnel and students. Moreover, how teachers are expected to reach their pupils in the education process? Group programmes can facilitate interconnectedness in schools, “the feeling of connectedness to school personnel and the school environment” (Bonny et al., 2000, p. 1017), to the extent that they build their relationship to the broader school community.

Therefore, the elusive issues that are problematic for parents and teachers reside in research findings of similar situations. Studies indicated that a high level of school connectedness is strongly related to safer behaviors (Resnick et al, 1997) and better health outcomes (Mechanic & Hansell, 1987; Resnick et al., 1997; Resnick, Harris & Blum, 1993) as well as less school absenteeism, less disruptive behavior in school, and higher academic achievement (Battistich & Hom, 1997; Battistich et al., 1995).

Despite the geo-political environment of Western Kingston, children must be given an equal opportunity to education for future human development. It is through education that may be formal (schooling) or informal (environment) that social mobility will occur for many of these inner-city students. The informal education to which they have come to accept is focused around gangs, violence, music and viciousness as a medium of social mobility. Even though, they are cognizant that such setting is highly temporal, “a minute of is better than none at all”. Hence, formal education, within the construct of the social exclusion to which the students are aware, must provide a vision for betterment as against perpetuating the existing social structure of their environment. There is dialectic; the parents were ignorance of psychosocial conditions of their children.

GENERAL THEMES OF DISCOURSE WITH PARENTS

(1)Impact of community violence and interpersonal aggression on children (2) Fear and anxiety of students during violence in community (3) Symptoms of conduct disorder in students (4) Ignorance of impact of community on students’ behaviour (5) Conflict between teachers and principal (6) Cultural gap between students and teachers (7) Why do students attend school? No link between education and life success (8) Students are socially engaged, but not academically engaged

SUGGESTIONS

(1)Interviews with parents (face-to-face interactions); (2) Community walks - in order to grasped the geo-political zone of the community; (3) More focus group discussion; (4) Surveys - questionnaire; (5) Counseling of parents; (6) Psychological evaluation of cognition of parents; (7) Role of financial resources on psychosocial attitude of students; (8) Role of the religiosity in the cognition in the development of the children; (9) Investigate the social arrangement of the parent, and its influence on the psyche of the child/ren; (10) The influence of parenting style on psychological attitude of the children; (11) Methods of punishments for deviance; (12) Needs of the parents; (13) Satisfaction of the parent/s with their social development; (14) Expectations of the parents for their children; (15)Investigate academic performance of the children before and after gang violence; (16) Observation of the children’s psychosocial behaviour prior to and after turf war

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THE CRIMINALS DESERVE TO BE ATTACKED; THE SECURITY FORCES DESERVES TO BE SUPPORTED!

These so-called humanists are way off base by attacking the security forces when they should be attacking the don, rapists and shotta killers! But by attacking the security forces when they commit illegal acts or mistakenly injure innocent citizens, and keeping quiet when murderous dons and killer rapists run rampant, the ego-motivated false humanists are sending an implicit message that the law officers are evil and the crazed killers are good and related to Robin Hood! Who committed more murder, rapes, robberies, arsons, kidnappings and extortions last year, the security forces or the criminal underground contract killers and crime syndicates?

The answer is simple arithmetic. The only reason then why a person would focus on the exceptions to the norm and not on the main contributors to crimes against the citizenry, is if one has an agenda - often hidden!

Some of these media hounds who love to run after the massa's cousin constantly asking her opinion, as if she is somebody important to national development, should ask her how come she does not attack the criminals with the same ferocity with which she attacks the security forces. Of course we all know the answer; attacking the security forces offers more opportunities for visibility, profit potential (lawsuits against the government) and safety. These are the reasons why these so-called humanists exist and not as they like to say; that they care about abused citizens!

A VIOLENT AND AGGRESSIVE PEOPLE OFFER PROFIT POTENTIAL FOR HUMANS WRONGS WATCH AND JAMAICANS FOR SELECTIVE JUSTICE

Jamaicans world wide among other things, have a reputation for aggressiveness and violent tendencies. The high illegitimate birth rate and consequent poor family structures are major contributors to this. Our violent and demonstrative history is another factor, but we have no excuses for not having taken the nation along a path of healing.

When a violent and aggressive people forms a security force how can that force not reflect the consciousness of that people? You cannot just change a man's uniform and think that you can change his nature. You cannot train persons who support lynching suspects and calling it mob justice, and think that some of them will not retain the urge to take the law into their own hands. The security forces are violent and abusive because the Jamaican people are violent and abusive. The actions of the security forces are the symptoms of a warped, violent, pathological consciousness, which seeks to inflict pain and disfigurement to establish dominancy over rebellious or contradictory actions. Power magnifies the hidden characteristics of any individuals and we have many examples worldwide.

Any so-called humanists or actions that seek to address the violence of the security forces and seek to bring corrective actions by suing and verbally disparaging the security forces, is focusing on the symptoms and not on the source of the problem. What happens when focus is on the symptoms and not on the cause to bring a cure? There is the guaranteed continuity of the disease. This is the same principle on which traditional medicine maintains its profitability. The so-called humanists, Jamaicans for Selective Justice and others are guilty of this. Continuity of symptoms also offers them platforms for profitability hence their refusal to address any cause or origin. As long as there are symptoms they are guaranteed a forum to massage their egos. They have no interest in solving the problems.

Ironically, we saw a few weeks ago a mob in St. Thomas calling for the same thing that the so-called humanists are fighting against "the police shudda kill im wen dem fine im", they said about a suspect arrested for suspicion of multiple killings, proving my point that the problem is not a security force problem, but a citizen problem. Here we saw the citizenry, who so-called humanists are protecting from illegal police killings, calling for the police to kill suspects they captured, and the selective justice police Carolyn Gomes, had nothing to say! Our high rate of mob killings, the highest in the Caribbean, absolutely proves that this is a violent people too quick to resort to violence instead of dialogue. Humanists would never address the problem at the root, as they would be on the road to irrelevance. They are not defending the poor and powerless, as they like to claim as much as they are establishing a foundation for their long-term existence.

JAMAICANS FOR SELECTIVE JUSTICE HAS ASSISTED IN BRAINWASHING THE POPULACE INTO CRIMINALIZING THE POLICE AND "LEGALIZING" THE CRIMINALS!

The citizenry is so brainwashed that they will demonstrate against police shootings but they have no heart to demonstrate against the murderous gunmen! The war against crime will not be won without the sacrifice of the lives of security officers and brave citizens in the same way that the country will not prosper without the country paying the price needed for prosperity. This is a country that desires improved outcomes without paying the required price because we have become so used to begging for overseas aid that we believe that we do not have to pay a price for anything and if it is not available through begging then we are seemingly lost and do not know what strategy to use to acquire it.

But we have chosen freedom and democracy and with it and our begging mentality, we have developed a spirit of inertia and fear of criticism from organizations like Human Rights Watch, and a fear that the overseas aid and charity will be cut, consequently when there is a successful system of crime eradication like that used by the brave patriot Adams and his group, we jump like robots to muffle it at the first sound of overseas disapproval or news conference by HRW, because the massa's cousins, Human Rights Watch and Jamaicans For Selective Justice has convinced the nation that crime fighting can be successful without unfortunate incidents and even illegal acts from some passionate security officers. The Rudolf Giuliani (breaking news- the next president of the USA) administration in New York who was wrongly credited with solely reducing the crime rate in New York and which has been foolishly praised locally as the second coming of Wyatt Earp, did have some success with quality of life crimes but the secret is they broke the law to do so and was later sued successfully by thousands of New Yorkers. In any successful crime reduction operation or war there will be wrongful deaths by security forces but this should not be reason to disband a successful strategy.

PATHETIC MEDIA RUNS AFTER THE OPINIONS OF CAROLYN GOMES

It is sickening to see the media gasping, and salivating to hear the opinion of this woman, who is unimportant to the development of Jamaica. They are still under the massa's influence in my opinion or else they would be running to other persons of similar position, but they are not, thus proving my charge!

Don Robotham is absolutely correct and these humanists should go away!

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Amnesty International also found that girls are particular targets of sexual violence and that the Jamaican government has consistently failed to deal with the issue effectively. According to one study published by UNICEF in 2004 alone, 70 per cent of all reported sexual assaults were against girls.

"Discrimination against women and girls is so entrenched in Jamaican society that many Jamaicans and government officials are failing to see it as a problem, even when it’s killing hundreds of women every year," said Kerrie Howard.

In a survey carried out last year, 2005, 66% of men and 49% of women agreed with the statement “women and girls sometimes bring rape upon themselves”. Certain guidance issued by judges to juries states that "... experience has shown that women and young girls often tell lies..."

”Jamaican women frequently do not feel safe. They know that whether at home, on the street or even at school they risk being beaten, raped or even killed”, said Kerrie Howard.

Women also face discrimination and strong barriers when they decide to report sexual violence. The sexual assault investigations unit in Jamaica estimates that only 25 per cent of sexual violence is reported.

"I didn't tell anyone for six months then I told my parents. I asked dad not to do anything about it; that's one thing I insisted on. I didn't want anyone to know because even at that age I knew they would say it was my fault [and] I thought no one would believe me. I blamed myself and I thought I was foolish and so naive," said Mary (not her real name), who was raped when she was 13.

”Women have good reason to think that they will not be believed the evidence is all around them, in their societies and communities. Juries, the police, families, and sometimes women themselves, believe that they are partially responsible for their attacks”, said Kerrie Howard.

Bringing cases of sexual violence to court is extremely difficult. One problem is that witnesses or victims are often threatened even killed. Enid Gordon was 15 when she was raped by two men. She and her family filed a complaint against the men, who were arrested, charged, and released on bail. On 12th October 2005, one week before she was due to testify against the two men in court, Enid was found dead in the same place that she had been raped a year earlier. She had been strangled with her school tie. Results of the investigation are pending.

Amnesty International is also calling for legislative reforms particularly to the Offences against the Person Act, the Sexual Harassment Bill, and the Incest (Punishment) Act for improvement of investigation techniques and for the establishment of gender-based training for police and judicial officials dealing with cases of sexual violence against women.

Jamaican society as a whole is paying the price of discrimination against women and girls. They pay a high price when their mothers, sisters and friends are injured, when diseases such as HIV/AIDS are spread, and when poverty increases. It isn’t an impossible or expensive task to end violence against women in Jamaica. It only takes determination and respect for the human rights of women.

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