The Youth Resilience, Inclusion, and Empowerment Program: Risk in Crime Prevention in the Eastern Caribbean

• In Event: Childhood and Adolescent Delinquency: New Research on Risk Factors and Interventions

Abstract

The Caribbean continues to grapple with high levels of violent crime. Traditional responses of Caribbean states have been dominated by crime suppression/control, rather than prevention. Evidence, however, suggests that targeted social approaches to crime prevention may provide a better way forward. The risk factor prevention paradigm developed in the 1980s as a means of identifying and predicting problem behaviour among youth, towards the goal of implementing evidenced based strategies aimed at prevention. The Youth Resilience, Improvement and Empowerment (Y-RIE) approach to crime prevention developed against this background with the goal of improving the targeting of high-risk youth in the Eastern Caribbean, and increasing the impact of interventions on youth crime prevention. Using life-course interviews with a sample of incarcerated youth in Guyana, Grenada and St Lucia, this paper investigates risk factors for crime and violence, and explores how these risk factors shape youth life trajectories towards crime and violence. Interviews revealed poverty, family dysfunction, proximity to violence and low educational attainment to be the most critical risk factors that characterized the experiences of incarcerated youth. Y-RIE will use these findings in collaborations with partner agencies and support further strengthening of regional government systems beyond the life of the project.

Author

• Corin Bailey, University of the West Indies