CARICOM Youth Crime Committee: Eight Young Voices, but Will Trinidad and Tobago Turn Advice Into Action?
Eight young advisers could help shape regional crime prevention. We examine who gets heard, what the evidence says about youth and violence in T&T, and how advice could become measurable action.
Eight young voices are being invited to help shape regional crime prevention. For Trinidad and Tobago, the test will be whether their ideas reach the schools, services and communities that need them.
A seat at the table matters. So does what happens after everybody leaves the meeting.
The new CARICOM Youth Crime Committee puts a practical question before Trinidad and Tobago: when young people explain what could make their communities safer, who has to act on what they say?
For a parent worried about a child’s journey home, a teacher trying to keep a student engaged or a young person seeking a way out of violence, “youth participation” needs a visible result. That could be a counselling appointment that actually happens, a safer route to school or sustained help to stay in education.
The committee creates an opening. Whether that opening leads to change will depend on representation, resources and a public record of decisions.
What the CARICOM Youth Crime Committee will do
CARICOM announced the Youth Advisory Committee on the Prevention of Crime and Violence, or YAC-PCV, on 8 September 2026. The announcement did not specify a separate establishment date.
It describes eight members aged 18–29, drawn from selected Member States and Associate Members, bringing civil-society involvement, lived experience, advocacy and technical knowledge. Their work includes co-creating and refining prevention initiatives, webinars, toolkits, policy material and regional discussions. Topics include restorative justice, diversion, alternatives to incarceration and cyber safety.
The CARICOM announcement also sets out an intention to include diverse and marginalised voices. It does not publish a membership roster, country allocations, budget, terms of service or a binding process for government responses. A Trinidad and Tobago seat therefore remains unconfirmed in that public statement. These are gaps in the published information, rather than proof that no arrangements exist.
That distinction is essential. The committee deserves to be assessed on its actual work. Equally, the public needs enough information to follow that work.
Young people and crime: get the Trinidad and Tobago claim right
The local connection is urgent, but the statistics need careful handling.
In April 2023, the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian reported then Police Commissioner Erla Harewood-Christopher’s assessment that people aged 15–29 were the country’s main offenders in violent crime. She also highlighted young people’s exposure as victims.
That is a dated assessment about violent crime. It does not establish that young people committed most of all crimes in 2026. The public material reviewed for this article does not provide a current national breakdown that supports that broader claim.
The difference matters when deciding what to fund. A programme responding to teenage recruitment into violence has different responsibilities from one addressing adult repeat offending, domestic abuse or financial crime. Putting everything under “youth crime” can obscure those differences.
Age categories also vary. The committee’s members are 18–29; the historical police assessment covered 15–29. Teenagers below the committee’s minimum membership age still need safe ways to contribute. Arrest figures, meanwhile, measure arrests; they cannot automatically be treated as convictions or proof of guilt.
None of this reduces the need to act. It makes the case for asking better questions: which young people face which risks, where, and what support reaches them before violence escalates?
A concentration of offending within an age group also says nothing about the proportion of all young people who offend. Young Trinidadians and Tobagonians must be able to enter this discussion as residents, students, workers, parents and problem-solvers.
Eight seats must connect to people outside the meeting
Eight members cannot personally embody every Caribbean experience. Effective representation will therefore depend heavily on how they listen beyond their own networks.
For T&T, that should include Tobago, rural communities and young people who do not belong to an established organisation. It should include people with disabilities and those whose working hours, transport costs or limited internet access make conventional consultations difficult.
A polished application should not become the price of being heard. Nor should a young person have to disclose a traumatic experience publicly to prove that their contribution matters.
The practical questions are straightforward. Can someone contribute without attending a capital-city event? Is participation accessible? Are expenses covered? Can a person describe a risk confidentially? Who explains what happened to their suggestion afterwards?
For adolescents, consultation needs appropriate consent, safeguarding and referral arrangements. Nobody should be encouraged to name alleged gang members or disclose sensitive personal details in an open workshop.
Caribbean organisations overseas could contribute relevant skills and support where useful. Decisions should remain grounded in people living with the consequences locally. Diaspora involvement works best when it responds to needs that communities themselves identify.
Advice needs an owner, a budget and a response
The committee’s advisory role does not give it command over national policing, prosecution, sentencing or public spending. Its influence will depend on how institutions with those responsibilities respond.
The wider CARICOM–UN Action Framework on crime and violence, launched in May 2026, treats crime as a development and human-security challenge. It brings prevention, treatment and reintegration into the picture alongside enforcement, while retaining national implementation choices.
For the committee, that leaves a crucial practical gap to close: how does a regional recommendation become a national decision?
A useful public record would identify each recommendation, the institution responsible for considering it, the response deadline and the outcome. “Accepted” should lead to an implementation owner, funding decision and delivery date. “Rejected” should come with a reason. “Under consideration” should not become a permanent address.
For a recommendation requiring several ministries, someone must coordinate their work. Otherwise, a proposal can circulate between education, health, social services and security agencies without any one institution being accountable for delivery.
This is where meaningful influence becomes visible: a young person’s input changes a service, a funding priority or a programme design, and the public can trace that decision.
T&T already has a local initiative to connect
On 4 September, TTT reported the launch of The Resilient Youth audiovisual initiative and an Interim Youth Task Force by the Ministry of Homeland Security’s Policy and Community Support Office. The initiative followed a psychological intervention pilot in schools. Guardian reporting on 9 September also described the campaign’s emphasis on support and mentorship.
A formal connection between that local initiative and the regional committee has not been established in the material reviewed. Building one is a question for the responsible institutions.
Could local participants help identify problems for regional discussion? Could a regional toolkit be tested in T&T, with young people reporting what worked? Could findings return to the agencies responsible for changing the service?
Consider an illustrative proposal: students say the main obstacle to counselling is the delay between asking for help and receiving an appointment. A pilot could record that waiting time, identify where referrals stall and test changes in a defined group of schools.
Its first useful result might be shorter waits and more completed appointments. A claim that the pilot reduced crime would require additional evidence. Making that distinction allows a programme to demonstrate real progress without promising more than its data can support.
A first-year scorecard the public could actually use
The following is TriniLulz’s proposed accountability test, not an announced CARICOM timetable. The clock should start from a published work plan, with clear responsibilities and adequate resources.
| What to track | What the public should see | Suggested reporting point |
|---|---|---|
| Access and representation | Membership, selection process, consultation routes and measures to reach excluded groups. | Within 30–60 days of the work plan. |
| Decisions and money | Recommendations, written government responses, delivery owners, approved budgets and actual spending. | Quarterly. |
| Service delivery | Relevant measures such as referral waits, participation and programme completion, compared with a starting baseline. | Baseline, then quarterly. |
| Participant outcomes | Suitable measures such as school engagement or repeat offending, with clear definitions and lawful data safeguards. | At six and twelve months where appropriate. |
| Independent review | Participant feedback, safety concerns, evaluation findings and changes made in response. | A published review within the first year. |
The choice of measures must fit the intervention. A webinar can reasonably be assessed for reach, usefulness and whether practitioners apply its material. A community violence programme needs a more demanding evaluation.
T&T has experience to draw on. A 2018 Inter-American Development Bank evaluation of Project REASON, a Cure Violence intervention in Port-of-Spain communities, used several data sources and a quasi-experimental design. It found reductions in violence-related measures in the intervention area during the period studied.
That historical, localised finding offers an example of serious evaluation. It is not evidence that this new committee has produced results, or a guarantee that another programme will achieve the same outcome.
Any new pilot should identify its population, baseline and comparison period in advance. A short drop in recorded incidents cannot establish causation by itself. Improved trust can also encourage more reporting, temporarily raising recorded numbers even as access to help improves.
Who answers a year from now?
Eight young advisers should not be made responsible for the national murder count. Ministers, agencies and funded delivery organisations retain their responsibilities.
The committee can contribute insight, challenge assumptions and help improve prevention tools. Governments can give that contribution weight by publishing responses, supporting implementation and showing what changed.
For Trinidad and Tobago, the opportunity is to connect regional discussion to a young person’s everyday experience of getting help, staying safe and being taken seriously.
What should young people be able to point to a year from now and say: our input helped change that?
Want the bigger picture? Explore our Trinidad Crime & Security hub for dashboards, explainers, updates, and deeper coverage of one of the country’s most urgent ongoing stories.
