By Simon

In the inner-city areas and environs of New Providence, the density of social decay is staggering and overwhelming. Tens of thousands of young Bahamians, mostly teen and young adult men, are bored, idle, hopeless, largely uneducated, poorly socialised, and chronically unemployed.

These same youth are men and women with enormous potential, talent, dreams, and longings for meaning and purpose. Which makes the tragedy of their potential and actual loss glaring and depressing.

Walk through certain areas and carefully observe the widespread urban decay, crumbling infrastructure and garbage strewn streets. Much of the built environment and social conditions resemble a hellscape mirroring the internal lives of many.

Every day, thousands of young men walk around idle, locked into patterns of behaviour with little opportunity to break certain cycles of despair.

Human beings are creatures of habit. Boredom must be appeased. Idle energy requires release. Hopelessness often expresses itself in destructive patterns, many of which are difficult to arrest.

Disorder is rampant in the daily grind of social decay in inner city neighbourhoods along with habits regularly reinforced, often in criminal behaviour, drug and alcohol abuse, random sex, and various patterns of violence and abusive behaviour. Cycles of abuse continue from one generation to the next.

The incidence of homelessness and mental illness has increased in New Providence, some of which can easily be seen throughout the island’s congested streets.

The boredom, idleness and despair are reinforced by gang behaviour, which many of those who participate in a gangland culture view as normal. Equally, many of us have come to accept this long-standing and grave social and economic state – which continues to metastasize – as normal and acceptable.

Aiding, abetting, fuelling, and taking advantage of hopelessness and addiction are gaming establishments, drug houses, and liquor stores, which are typically in close proximity to each other and to those in need of a quick hit. They drain neighbourhoods of youth, vitality, and resources.

Many gamble to pass the time and to desperately see if they can find some luck. The gambling houses stand in mockery to the struggles and desperation of those who need opportunity, not island luck.

The numbers bosses, whose business models earns scores of millions from the addictions of the poor and others, and who use charitable giving as a marketing ploy, are often celebrated and recognised in the media. This is twisted. Why are we celebrating those who give scant little back to the people they are preying upon?

Barbados Today recently reported: “A literacy specialist has called for urgent, island-wide reforms to Barbados’ education and social services after a government study revealed that more than 95 percent of violent offenders are reading at the level of a three-year-old, exposing a stark link between illiteracy and crime.

“Literacy specialist Shawntelle Morgan told Barbados Today she was “deeply concerned” by the findings, which were disclosed by the director of the Criminal Justice Research and Planning Unit…”

Morgan noted: “I was deeply concerned, not just because it was offenders, but violent offenders. I think that it really underscores the profound relationship between literacy and social outcomes…

“We see now that literacy is not just a foundational skill for academic success, but things like self-advocacy, problem-solving, and most importantly, navigating societal structures.

“Individuals with severe literacy deficiencies are often marginalised, disengaged, and vulnerable to social risk, including criminal behaviour.” What are the literacy numbers in The Bahamas among violent offenders?

Many thousands of young Bahamians lack the educational, social, job, and life skills necessary to break the cycle and web of hopelessness in which they are ensnared. They need the help of families, communities, churches, and government to help release them from the traps in which they find themselves.

The statistics on unemployment do not adequately reveal the number of youth who have stopped looking for work, including after the COVID-19 pandemic. Our streets are teeming with tens of thousands of unemployed youth. This is a social, economic and moral challenge. It is the persistent challenge of inequality.

Both major parties have spoken of inequality over the decades since majority rule and independence, including social and economic inequality. Much has been done in a number of areas to address such inequality. Still, there were missed opportunities by certain administrations to do more to address urban squalor, decay, and poor infrastructure.

In 2023, Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis gave an address at the Lyford Cay Club, where he spoke at length on inequality. He noted a number of important things. Unfortunately, thus far, his remarks have not been matched by a bold and progressive policy agenda, especially as regards young Bahamians.

This includes those aged 18-30 who believe that both major parties are lacking in empathy and a vision to improve their lives. Many of these young people fret that the parties pay lip service to improving their lives and circumstances.

For its part, the Free National Movement must lay out its own ambitious agenda of genuine hope and opportunity to help the tens of thousands of young people being lost.

The stark and explosive inequality coursing through the urban areas of New Providence, which are experiencing woeful neglect, require a new and imaginative commitment to addressing income inequality and social development fifty plus years after independence.

Unlocking destructive habits among at-risk and lost youth requires the creation and reinforcement of new habits and landscapes of hope. Three keys areas for developing lifegiving habits are education, including preschool; economic and job prospects; and sustained social intervention.

With work and income critical in addressing the social morass in New Providence, structural reforms are needed in tourism and other industries to significantly boost economic growth and provide better jobs.

In addition to structural changes in the economy, we need a broad and sustained social transformation agenda. This will require deploying the resources needed for universal preschool, more targeted skills and job programs, novel youth development initiatives, mental health and drug abuse programmes, and more creative and large-scale urban renewal strategies.

If either or both the PLP and FNM are truly serious about inequality generally, and in particular, the needs of young people crying out for hope, the country needs see policies and action plans, not talk and flowery speeches.

To this end, can Philip Davis and/or Opposition leader Michael Pintard find the willpower to tax the gaming houses at a higher level and to create a national lottery alongside the existing private lotteries? The latter will require a broad restructuring of gaming with enhanced regulations and restrictions.

We need to utilise more of the many millions flowing into gaming houses for the benefit of the majority of Bahamians, including those regularly standing outside gaming and liquor establishments, aimless and without greater purpose.

If we aim to be a more just, fairer, and more decent society, committed to core Christian values, the country needs to deploy the resources and energy to love and to rescue the thousands of young Bahamians whose lives it is in our power to transform. We ignore this mission at our moral and social peril.