Pastor calls on society to address rising youth violence

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Bishop Charlesworth Browne, head of the Prison Visiting Committee (File photo)
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By Robert A. Emmanuel

[email protected]

Addressing the recent spate of attacks perpetrated by youth against youth will take “a whole of society approach”.

That was the opinion of Bishop Charlesworth Browne, head of the Prison Visiting Committee, during an interview with Observer yesterday.

His comments followed the position put forward by Cabinet spokesperson Melford Nicholas during last Thursday’s post-Cabinet press briefing, who posited that church and civil society groups need to become more involved to address the rise in youth-on-youth attacks.

Bishop Browne believes that parents need to do more to ensure that their children are not becoming involved in gang activities, and made a case for a review of legal marijuana use by young people.

“This is getting out of hand. If you have smokers in the house and you realise some are adversely affected by it, you have to make the sacrifice and stop it so that you can save the children,” he said.

The bishop also argued that the music some young people listen to has had a negative impact on them and may be fuelling the tendency for them to commit violent acts.

“We have a situation where young people have gotten into music and there are some forms of music – the lyrics – that are inimical to the development of our young people,” he stated.

He said that preventing youth from accessing music with distasteful lyrics remained a challenge due to the internet.

“What we are going to do about the music is another story because we have all of these gadgets now; sometimes we don’t know what people are listening to,” he said.

Bishop Browne believes that conversations must be held with the artistes who produce such types of songs regarding the impact of their lyrics on youth.

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