GREAT BAY--Minister of Justice Nathalie Tackling sharply challenged Member of Parliament Egbert Doran in Parliament on Wednesday over his continued advocacy for military-style training or service for St. Maarten’s youth, saying the proposal continues to return without sufficient clarity about what exactly is being proposed or how it would work in practice.
Tackling said her position on the issue has not changed and suggested that she expects to continue answering the same question because the proposal itself continues to return without addressing the practical problems she has previously identified.
“My view has not changed. I have answered this question before and I expect to answer the question again because it keeps returning in a form that has not changed either,” Tackling said.
The Minister said an immediate problem is that different programs are repeatedly discussed as though they are the same thing.
She pointed to the professional military units in Curaçao and Aruba, where soldiers undergo extensive basic military training and are appointed as military personnel, and contrasted those with social formation programs that offer shorter periods of voluntary military-style training followed by a work or study phase.
“The difficulty begins with what is actually being proposed, because these are different things,” Tackling said.
She said Doran has not made sufficiently clear which model he wants St. Maarten to pursue, making it difficult to have a serious discussion about implementation, cost, responsibility and the target group.
“The member has not said which of these he means, and in previous meetings lacked the same depth of clarity from which a debate can be held,” Tackling said. The Minister also challenged the suggestion that such a program would provide a straightforward solution to youth crime.
She noted that the existing programs in Aruba and Curaçao are voluntary and generally target young adults who have already left school. That, she said, means they would not necessarily reach minors entering St. Maarten’s juvenile justice system, where some of the country’s concerns about youth offending are concentrated.
Tackling also rejected the repeated suggestion that St. Maarten could simply send young people to programs in Aruba or Curaçao.
“Sending our young people to Aruba or Curaçao is often offered as the easy answer. It is not easy,” she said.
According to the Minister, such an arrangement would require agreements with the respective countries and personnel in St. Maarten to identify, assess and select participants and manage the country’s responsibilities under the program.
She said the Justice chain and its partners are already stretched and do not presently have spare capacity to simply take on those additional responsibilities.
“It is a point that is never considered when this idea is raised,” Tackling said.
She also noted that St. Maarten does not yet have the military infrastructure required to simply replicate programs operating elsewhere in the Kingdom and that involvement by the Ministry of Defense would require approval and coordination.
Tackling stressed that youth crime has multiple causes and cannot be addressed through a single military-style intervention.
“Youth crime has many causes and it requires action in education, youth support, employment and the conditions that young people grow up in. No single program addresses all of that,” she said.
Her response amounted to a direct challenge to Doran to move beyond repeatedly raising the concept and present a detailed proposal explaining which model he supports, whom it would serve, who would administer it, how it would be funded and what capacity exists to implement it.
Tackling maintained that Government must focus on measures that can realistically be delivered rather than presenting a military-style youth program as a simple solution to a much wider social problem.
