Reports of gangs in Jamaican schools

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Reports of gangs in Jamaican schools

• Julie Meeks Gardner
• Joan Thomas
• Caribbean Child Development Centre, Consortium
  for Social Development and Research, University
  of the West Indies, Open Campus
• Col. Oral Khan
• Safe Schools Initiative
• Ministries of National Security, Health, Education

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Background

• Much of the violence in Jamaica attributed to
  gangs
• Anecdotal information only regarding involvement
  of children in gangs
• Safe Schools Initiative designed and conducted
  survey to investigate gang presence in schools
• UWI commissioned to analyze results

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Aims

• To determine the scope of gang involvement in
  schools in Jamaica
• To compare the results of different groups
  surveyed

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Method 1.

• Cross-sectional survey carried out in 2007
• Govt.-supported secondary schools
• 3 groups of respondents
• Principals
• School Resource Officers
• Students
• Instrument
• 30 items (closed)
• Self-administered

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• School Resource Officers (SROs)
• Programme since 2004
• Specially trained police officers
• Deployed in high risk schools
• Aim to reduce violence
• Activities
• mentoring students
• mediating disputes
• searching for weapons

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Method 2.

• Instrument
• 30 items (closed)
• Self-administered
• Data analysis
• Frequencies
• Results compared by respondent type,location
• Details of gangs only analyzed where respondents
  indicated a problem with gangs
• Questionnaires with no school name were omitted
  from analysis

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Results

• 124 schools (50)
• 51 Principals (20)
• 27 SROs (28)
• 240 students

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Overlap in respondents schools
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Location of respondents
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Agreement among respondents from the same schools

• 5 schools had respondents from all categories
• 2 questions compared
• Is bullying a problem?
• Are there gangs at your school?
• Agreement ranged from 60-80

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Bullying is a problem
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Gangs present in schools
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Girls involvement in gangs
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Grades of gang members
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Number of gangs
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Gang activities
These were gambling, smoking and intimidation
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School gangs linked to gangs outside
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Effectiveness of School Resource Officers
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Trends regarding gangs influence
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Gangs popularity among the general student body
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Analysis by location

• All responses analyzed by location
• No significant differences found by
• Urban vs. rural
• KSA vs. rest

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Summary

• First quantitative survey of school gangs in
  Jamaica
• Gangs and related activities in about half of
  schools
• Gangs not confined to urban areas
• Gangs in the community may be influencing school
  gangs

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Limitations

• Wide variation among respondents
• Definitions of terms, though provided on
  instrument may have been problematic
• Informants were not gang members
• Problems with self-completed questionnaires,
  incomplete data

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Recommendations

• Improve negative activities of groups
• Improve information sharing within schools
• Continued monitoring more detailed research

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