GREAT BAY–Minister of Justice Nathalie Tackling told Parliament on Wednesday that St. Maarten’s youth crime challenge is being driven not by a broad surge in juvenile offending, but by a smaller high-risk group, often older male teenagers with access to firearms, and warned that enforcement by itself will not solve the problem.
Appearing before the Justice Committee of Parliament, Tackling addressed three agenda points: the current crime situation affecting youth and communities, youth intervention options including possible military-style training, and the Ministry’s efforts to strengthen prevention and community support.
She said the 2025 figures showed both improvement and danger. According to the minister, St. Maarten recorded fewer homicides, armed robberies, traffic accidents, 911 calls, and noise complaints last year. At the same time, police enforcement activity increased, with more traffic tickets issued, more arrests made, and more firearms seized. Despite those improvements in some headline indicators, Tackling said gun-related crime involving young people remains the most urgent concern.
The minister said 50 minors were arrested in 2025, 44 of them male, for offenses including theft, receiving stolen goods, weapons violations, and firearm possession. For 2026 so far, she said 171 suspects have been arrested in total, including 11 minors, 10 of them male. Among the reported offenses was discharging a firearm, a detail Tackling said should focus the attention of policymakers.
She told Parliament the data does not point to a generalized youth crime wave. Instead, she said, it reflects a concentrated pattern involving a relatively small number of young people causing serious damage, particularly through gun-related offenses. That, she argued, requires early intervention in schools and communities, disruption of the networks through which firearms reach youth, and stronger protection for young people exposed to violence.
Tackling said youth offending is being shaped by multiple overlapping factors, including disrupted schooling, weak school attachment, unstable homes, trauma, untreated behavioral problems, limited job opportunities, peer pressure, and community environments where violence and weapons are normalized. She said a young person who is out of school, living in an unstable home, facing no real economic path, and surrounded by a weapon culture is operating under maximum risk.
Against that background, the minister laid out what she described as a four-pillar response: prevention, diversion, enforcement, and aftercare. Prevention, she said, means identifying at-risk youth early, coordinating with schools and youth services, and increasing community presence in and around schools and known hotspots. Diversion, including the HALT model for first-time and low-level offenders, is meant to keep young people from escalating into more serious criminal behavior. Enforcement, she said, must remain intelligence-led and firm where weapons possession, violent offending, and criminal recruitment are concerned. Aftercare, she added, is where policy often succeeds or fails, because young people who leave an intervention only to return to the same environment without support are likely to relapse.
On the issue of structured military-style youth training, Tackling signaled support for exploring the idea, but made clear that St. Maarten is not yet in a position to simply copy Aruba or Curaçao. She said a local pilot could potentially be financed in its initial phase through the Crime Fund, but warned that any long-term version would need structural funding, something the ministry cannot guarantee under current budget pressure.
She also said St. Maarten lacks the barracks, defense infrastructure, and standing operational capacity available in Aruba and Curaçao, meaning any SVT-type initiative would have to be carefully designed around local realities. A short feasibility and design study will therefore be launched to assess the possible number of participants, location options, governance, safeguards, Kingdom partnerships, and costs. The minister added that the existing St. Maarten Youth Brigade should also be examined as a possible local anchor or partner for any future structured program.
Tackling stressed that such a program would target the older youth group most reflected in the arrest figures, roughly ages 17 to 24, but said it would not replace earlier prevention work for younger at-risk teenagers. She described structured training as one possible route within a larger response, particularly in the area of aftercare and opportunity, rather than as a punishment model.
The minister also used her appearance to underline that youth interventions must be grounded in law. She said the Constitution, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Penal Code all require a justice system that balances accountability with reintegration, clear legal safeguards, and alternatives to detention. She said the ministry is working to close long-standing legal and operational gaps in juvenile justice, including clearer rules for diversion and stronger frameworks for juvenile measures.
Tackling updated Parliament on a range of initiatives already in progress, including the work of the Youth and Morals Division of KPSM, case review meetings involving justice partners, school resource officers in secondary schools, and public awareness campaigns. She also pointed to Crime Fund-backed projects such as equine-assisted interventions for youth with trauma or aggression issues, a supervised maintenance training program, a two-year HALT diversion pilot, and maritime skills training aimed at giving at-risk youth a route toward certification and employment.
She further disclosed that the Ministry is taking first steps toward establishing a care and safety house in St. Maarten, designed as a multidisciplinary structure linking health care, education, social services, and justice agencies around complex cases. Regional cooperation efforts, including participation in the Caribbean Field Lab and the planned War Room 2026 in St. Maarten, are also being used to sharpen the response to youth gun violence.
Tackling closed by urging a broader national response, telling Parliament that St. Maarten’s young people should not be treated as a problem to be managed, but as a generation worth investing in.
Source: The Peoples Tribune https://tribune-site.webflow.io//articles/min-tackling-says-youth-crime-fight-cannot-be-won-by-enforcement-alone
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