Avia Collinder, Sunday Gleaner Writer

Herbert Gayle, lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work at the University of the West Indies, is contending that parents of youths in poor communities, as well as community organisations, are involved in the exploitation of young Jamaicans.

He also says a large number of Jamaican youths are heads of their households, and others are forced to drop out of school. "This is abuse," states Gayle, as he discloses the results of a recently concluded research paper titled, 'Forced Ripe'.

Sponsored by the World Bank and the Jamaica Social Policy Evaluation (JASPEV) project, the research paper looks at how youths assess their identity, the support they receive from those in authority, as well as their relationship with the police and the implications for social policy.

Ills endured by children

Researchers, Dr. Kirstan Hawkins, Horace Levy and Gayle, presented their findings last Thursday, at the Terra Nova All-Suite Hotel, in St. Andrew. The study shows that the young people suffer from poor-quality education and high rates of attrition from school, lack of employment opportunities, poor reproductive health and high rates of teenage pregnancy, unstable home environments and poor parenting, and high levels of crime and violence, including domestic violence and sexual abuse.

According to Gayle, "Forced ripe is used to refer to young people, kids, who have to provide for their mother and father."

He states: "We put them (offspring) through brutal hardship. We are demanding too much. We are breaking them, fracturing our youth with our demands. It is something happening within our environment, which needs to stop."

The researcher continues: "Working-class youths are at the stage where they needmost help, but they are viewed by their parents as their 'hand and foot'. The more work you do, the more food you get. It makes the youths question how genuine is the love of parents and society."

Noting that the murder rate in one of the research communities is four times the national average, Gayle, an anthropologist, asserts: "Jamaica has the highest youth murders in the world. In this community, which has a population of 8,000, people are dying at four times the rate of the national average."

Uniformly, he said, youths also suffer from above-average levels of police harassment and in one area where they said they had better or good relations, it was said this was because 'police a look them'. Police were known, the researcher said, for the constant seeking of sexual favours from young inner-city and rural-poor youths.

Changes required

Gayle said changes required for youths included the expansion of the Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education from the current figure of 9.1 per cent to 14.1 per cent of the population - on par with the poverty rate. He also stated that police-youth relations needed to be changed. He added that organisations which claimed that they were providing services for the youths needed to act with transparency.

The study was done using the peer research participatory method and involved 18 young women and men from age 17-29 years, from the communities of Tower Hill, Richmond Vale and Fletchers Land in St. Andrew, St. Thomas and Kingston, respectively.

'Forced Ripe' is part of a World Bank-funded study on 'Power and Poverty' in four countries - Jamaica, Ethiopia, Ghana and Bangladesh. Training was conducted by Dr. Kirstan Hawkins of Options U.K. and Herbert Gayle. Horace Levy supervised the research.

Youth facts