MY father was a police officer. He joined the rural police as a district constable in 1971. I am a serving district constable for over two decades.

My only son who lives in Jamaica would love to become a police officer but is prevented from doing so because of a tattoo policy. Well, I warned him.

My uncle was a soldier, and his son (my cousin) also served the Jamaica Defence Force.

Many lawyers serving now in the courts daily who regularly cross-examine me learnt their craft from their parents who also cross-examined me. This includes the Earl and Ryan Hamilton father-and-son team. They are lethal! There are several others also. The Wellesleys (Lynden and Vincent) are another well known team.

This type of generational professional continuity also exists in medicine. The Banburys come to mind — three generations of doctors.

Engineers, surveyors, you name it, you are what you were.

So does this extend to crime? Certainly! This is largely nurture, not nature, whereas the former professions I noted are a combination of both.

For crime the Coke family comes to mind, where the conduct continued despite the lack of a genetic connection. “Dudus” (Christopher) followed in Jim Brown’s (Lester Lloyd) footsteps despite this genetic absence.

Killing though, to be more specific, can it be blamed on parental influence or more pointedly a lack of same?

A little-known fact is that many Jamaican killers are emotional wrecks. Does this contribute to their violent, antisocial, and selfish behaviour? Let’s look on a few examples.

Many years ago I responded to a report of a prostitute being shot on the Port Henderson Road in Portmore. Myself, along with Terrence Bent who was a young deputy superintendent of police at the time, responded. We intercepted the man and apprehended him.

Apparently the lady of the night had beaten a well known thug who wanted to extort her, and stabbed him in defence of her life. Like the coward he was, he returned and shot her. When we caught him he had thrown away the gun but still had contraband on him. He was arrested after being given medical treatment, and whilst I was putting him in custody he just said out of the blue, “You know, Mr Jason, I don’t know my mother.”

I inquired who raised him and he told me a well known old gangster of the 70s and 80s named Jessie.

I promised to try and locate his mother but was unsuccessful. He always asked me for updates on my efforts to locate his mother, leading up to his conviction. He got 30 years for his crime.

I have never been able to locate his mother.

So, did her absence create this killer? I think it did.

He was clearly deeply impacted by the absence of a mother in his life. His father had died when he was a baby. That void was filled by a criminal. The man I interviewed was in his 30s and still was asking for a mother he didn’t know.

The combination of the maternal absence and the influence of the man who filled it creates the blueprint for creating a killer.

I had a case recently wherein I was having a discussion with a 16-year-old who had been a suspect in a police shooting. Once I asked of his father he burst into tears and said he died before he was born. I inquired as to how he could be so upset about a man he never met. He replied, “Because a nuff mi guh tru, and mi feel if mi had a father it woulda betta”.

His logic makes sense. His emotional response demonstrates a deep feeling of loss that is illogical, but in some way understandable.

This child is heading to prison or an early grave — I can say this with great certainty after 20 years of combating, convicting, and studying gangsters.

Is this to be blamed on his father’s absence? You tell me!

Let us discuss the mother of another young man who, in the not-too-distant past, gave a statement implicating another man in a murder her son committed. She constantly supports her son, despite the misery to which he subjects entire families. Is she the creator of that killer?

Well I would love to say yes but, truth be told, she is more of an enabler than a creator.

So generally, do existing parents who support their child through and through create the killer? No. I don’t think so.

Parents who are killers create killers.

The absence of a parental figure in the first two examples allowed the void to be filled by other persons, who then created killers.

Family members generally who are gangsters will influence, and thus create, killers. They don’t have to be parents; they can be brothers, cousins, or uncles. As long as they are able to influence in a small-space environment they can create extensions of themselves.

This is the machinery that puts killers on the production line as quick as we remove one from society. The number is not infinite. There are only so many families that can produce criminals annually that we can predict where the next ones will come from. However, we have never attacked crime that surgically.

We respond to the criminal of the day as police officers. As a Government we make efforts to improve social circumstances in a macro sense. Both methods are logical, but none will prevent the factory from producing more killers every year.

This will require specific criminological studies to identify the families and the homes that continue to create the killers.

What of the parent?

Well, I recently heard psychologist and sociologist Dr Leahcim Semaj state in an interview that “parents are the first teachers”. I couldn’t agree with him more. This is not limited to academic progress. Parents determine what and who you will become, and what noun you will wear and what adjective describes you.

This in most cases can defeat the environment in which you were raised. It can even upend that criminal cousin in the adjoining room.

It is, however, that much more difficult if the family is a negative influence and the community is a breeding ground of misery.

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