WITHOUT a doubt, one of the more horrifying things about this past week is, that I found out firsthand that with the “right” conditions, it is easy to descend down the slippery slope of deviant behaviour.

What started out as a casual Saturday midday hang with friends in the Promenade Gardens turned into an episode of assault and robbery. A young man- just in his early twenties- confronted a few teenagers and relieved them of their valuables, before making his escape over the fence and soon enough, was gone with the wind.

On the brighter side of this week, the Guyana National Youth Council (GNYC) hosted a discussion where youth and stakeholders were given an opportunity to weigh-in on prioritising youth and advancing youth development. It was an evening of conversation on how youth feel and view themselves in society and how they could move forward.

These two events seem mutually exclusive but I believe that there is a nexus between the tenets of the two. For me, deviant behaviour and youth crime arise out of the inadequacy of youth development.

As the Marxists advance, crime is not only a phenomenon that occurs with the proletariats alone but instead, it occurs at all levels of society. I believe that more often than not, as the Marxists also contend, those who commit deviant acts from the working class are those who are more readily identified as the criminals and are subsequently pilloried quite easily.

Let’s use this completely hypothetical situation for some perspective: The youth that robbed my friend is most definitely seen as a criminal and it is our hope that he is brought to justice. But while his behaviour is inexcusable, there must be something that birthed his actions. It could be some issue that disrupted his family or some traumatic event that rendered him seemingly “helpless”.

This, of course, weighs on the assumption that his reason for stealing was motivated by some constraint he was feeling. And further leaning on what Robert Merton conceptualised in his ‘strain’ theory on crime, that constraints develop when there is a disconnect between the goals and aspirations of people and their means of achieving these.

With this in mind, by bridging that disconnect between one’s goals and means of achieving the said goals, there would be no need to resort to crime or any deviant activity in this regard, right? So then, youth development becomes critical for any society, not just ours.

And in contextualising this youth development, there must also be cognisance that its “inadequacy” is not just something spurred out of thin air but is a result of many preexisting factors, or what I will call-issues.

Among these issues, there are general anthropological underpinnings of existing as a young, working-class member in a society, characterised but ethnic polarity and worrying underemployment.

Now with the GNYC, a unique strategy is employed. It’s current chairman and youth advocate Derwayne Wills acknowledged, “… youth in itself [are] not just a group of people defined by this [15-35] demographic.” Instead, he shared that “youth” encompasses varying subgroups of young people with different and unique ideas, interests and identities and resultantly, cannot be developed through blanket coverage solutions. So their intention is to tap into each varying subgroup and truly understand what each group needs.

Yes, it for sure seems like much, much (much!) more work but it also seems much more effective in the context of advancing youth development across all spheres in an equitable way. It’s not just the veil of equality but takes a step further.

At this juncture, it becomes tricky navigating between what seems parochial and what might actually be beneficial. There must be wariness of the politically correct among us and that such a strategy can also be jaundiced and function as a catalyst for divisiveness instead of cohesiveness.

Let’s take for example, at any time, the ethnic subgroup is used. Traditionally, indigenous people have been subjected to great levels of inequality and boosting the development of indigenous youth should advance that population. I won’t definitively say that this ethnic subgroup is the most disadvantaged, but if it was given more assistance than another, I don’t see everyone being mature enough to accept the system of equity as opposed to equality. That’s just the perhaps incoherent ramblings or worries I think I have.

Back on track, these two events really put each other into context for me and it’s not just about writing about anything this week. It is about understanding that youth in Guyana have different but real problems that cannot just be looked at one way, all the time. It’s necessary that these differences and disadvantages are understood individually. Better must come.