Placing metal detectors in schools is a small aspect of the comprehensive strategy to address criminality in Barbados.
Advancing this view, criminologist Yolande Forde argued devices such as the hand-held metal detectors proposed for schools by Minister of Education Santia Bradshaw following last week’s tragic incident at the Frederick Smith Secondary School “merely control the physical environment to reduce the incidence of crime, but do not change the behaviour”.
Instead, she suggested Barbados’ crime problem needed to be addressed “at the macro level”.
“What is really needed is a comprehensive, integrated crime reduction strategy. Piecemeal, ad hoc, knee-jerk measures are not going to work,” she said yesterday.
She told the Nation a “four-pronged strategy” was needed to address roots of the problem. (GC)
