Before They Become a Statistic, What Are We Offering Them?

I recently came across the story of Kiyoshi Kimura, a Japanese sushi businessman who travelled to East Africa during the height of Somali piracy.

The popular version says that Kimura spoke to the pirates, discovered that some had once been fishermen, gave them boats, taught them to catch tuna and promised to purchase their catch. The Internet has since credited him with single-handedly ending Somali piracy.

That part is not true.

Somali piracy declined through a combination of naval patrols, armed protection aboard ships, prosecutions, stronger government and improved security measures. Kimura’s intervention was small by comparison, and much of what we know about it comes from his own account.

Yet I could not dismiss the story, because beneath its exaggeration lies an important question.

While most of the world was asking, “How do we stop these pirates?” Kimura appears to have asked, “What happened to these people, and what could they do instead?”

That question brought me home to Trinidad and Tobago.

Almost every day, we are confronted by another story of violence, another young person charged with a serious crime, another family grieving, another child apparently recruited into a gang. We are also seeing young people turning their pain against themselves.

In one 48-hour period in September, the deaths by suicide of a 15-year-old girl and a 21-year-old university student were reported. Earlier this year, the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service reported that between January 2024 and February 2026, 22 children under the age of 18 had either died by suicide or attempted to take their lives. Most of those cases involved children aged 15 and 16.

We have heard of murder-suicides. We have heard of children being recruited into gangs from as young as 12. We have heard repeatedly about young people leaving school unable to read and write at the level needed to function independently.

These are not all the same problem, and they do not all have the same cause. Suicide cannot simply be blamed on unemployment. Crime cannot be explained only by poverty. Mental illness, trauma, abuse, relationship violence, family instability, drugs, organised criminal activity and individual choices must all be considered.

But surely these tragedies are telling us something about the condition of our nation’s inner life.

What happens to a child who moves through school unable to read properly?

What happens when embarrassment becomes anger, when anger becomes rebellion, and when rebellion is met only with rejection?

What happens to the young person who has no qualifications, no money, no connections, no trusted adult and no believable picture of a future?

A gang can enter that empty space and offer what legitimate society has failed to make available: money, identity, protection, status and belonging.

None of this excuses criminal behaviour. People who terrorise communities must be stopped. Innocent citizens must be protected. There must be effective policing, justice and accountability.

But arresting the person does not heal the conditions that produced another recruit to take his place.

We already have evidence of a different way in our own country.

SERVOL—Service Volunteered for All—was established in 1970. Its founders did not enter communities assuming that they knew everything. They asked the people, “How can we help you?”

What a powerful question.

SERVOL did not concentrate only on academic subjects. It addressed literacy, numeracy, emotional awareness, spirituality, discipline, self-understanding, creativity, social responsibility and vocational preparation. It recognised that a young person is not merely a brain to be examined. A young person is a whole human being who needs to experience dignity, purpose and hope.

SERVOL reports that more than 59,000 adolescents have passed through its development programmes. Its Junior Life Programme was created specifically for children who entered secondary-school age with severe educational deficiencies. It did not call them stupid. It did not declare them useless. It created another doorway.

MiLAT created another doorway for young men.

Through a structured, military-led environment, it offered academics, remedial reading, counselling, mentorship, discipline, vocational exposure and brotherhood. Some graduates obtained subjects they had failed to achieve elsewhere. Some entered business, trades, further education and the protective services. Some simply learned, perhaps for the first time, that they were capable of completing something worthwhile.

MiLAT has now been suspended while the Government reviews its cost and results. The Government says the programme cost TT$41.6 million over three years and that its certification rate did not justify that expenditure.

Those questions of cost and effectiveness deserve honest answers. No programme should be protected from evaluation simply because its intentions are good.

But how are we defining success?

If a young man entered unable to read properly and left reading, but did not gain five CSEC subjects, did the programme fail?

If he entered angry and undisciplined but left able to work, communicate and accept responsibility, where is that recorded?

If mentorship kept him from joining a gang, how much money did the country save in policing, court proceedings, imprisonment, hospital care and funeral expenses?

And most importantly, if MiLAT must be redesigned, what was put in place for the young men who were already depending upon it?

We cannot close one doorway before another has opened and then express surprise when the gang is waiting outside.

The United Nations estimated that in 2025, approximately 16.6 per cent of young people in Trinidad and Tobago were not in education, employment or training. A 2026 report on gangs in this country found that many gang members are young men from impoverished communities with little formal education or previous employment. It also reported recruitment among children between 12 and 16 years old.

The criminal economy understands recruitment. It identifies the vulnerable, offers immediate belonging, provides incentives and gives the recruit a role.

Why can the legitimate economy not be equally deliberate?

Imagine a national system in which no child struggling with literacy is allowed to disappear quietly through the education system.

Imagine every school-leaver without qualifications being personally connected—not merely handed a brochure—to SERVOL, ALTA, YTEPP, MiLAT, the Civilian Conservation Corps, an apprenticeship, a trade programme or another appropriate pathway.

Imagine training that includes a stipend, meals, transport and the tools required to participate, because an opportunity a poor young person cannot afford to reach is not a real opportunity.

Imagine businesses agreeing not only to conduct motivational talks, but to provide paid apprenticeships, employment interviews, mentoring and purchasing contracts for youth-led enterprises.

Imagine mental-health support, relationship education, conflict resolution, parenting assistance and trauma healing being treated as part of crime prevention—not as unrelated social extras.

And imagine measuring the results over five or ten years: literacy gained, programmes completed, employment sustained, businesses created, families strengthened, reoffending reduced and lives preserved.

This is not softness toward crime. It is seriousness about prevention.

We spend enormous sums responding after a young person has become dangerous. Police must investigate. Courts must try cases. Prisons must house offenders. Hospitals must treat the injured. Families must bury the dead.

What if we invested with the same urgency before that life reached the point of destruction?

The lesson in Kimura’s story is not that four fishing boats ended Somali piracy. They did not.

The lesson is that someone looked at people the world had labelled irredeemable and asked what legitimate life might still be possible for them.

SERVOL has been asking a similar question in Trinidad and Tobago for more than half a century:

“How can we help you?”

Perhaps our country must ask that question again—not after another child dies, not after another young man becomes a murderer, and not after another community is held hostage by a gang.

Before.

Before the child who cannot read begins to believe he cannot learn.

Before humiliation becomes rage.

Before pain becomes self-destruction.

Before the gang becomes the only place offering money, protection and belonging.

Before another life becomes a statistic.

I refuse to believe that any child born in Trinidad and Tobago came into this world as waste. There is ability there. There is intelligence there. There is something to be developed, directed and called forward.

But potential cannot live indefinitely without opportunity.

We can continue asking only, “How do we punish them?”

Or we can finally become brave enough to ask, “What are we offering them instead?”