Acting Police Commissioner James Philbert told a conference in Port of Spain Monday about 2,500 young men died in violence and gang warfare during the past four years.
"The cemeteries are rich. We have young men who keep coming back before the courts. We have to reduce gang involvement.
"We have had to introduce a repeat offenders program to help them. When we look, we find they have failed the drug test, psychological assessment and evaluation,” Philbert said.
He was making a contribution at in a discussion on compulsory national service at a seminar hosted by Citadel Limited on the theme "Saving Lives: Building Communities."
The police chief noted that young men are at risk, pointing out that many of them don't not have a father figure in their lives.
"They don’t know where there father is. They left school early. They dropped out," he said.
Philbert spoke about the famous address by Dr Eric Williams on the eve of independence in 1962 when the country's first head of government said the future of the nation lay in the school bags of students.
Philbert said today those book bags are carrying guns.
"The school bags should have national service. We have to do something if we want the youth to go in the right direction...We have a missing generation," he said.
Citdel executive chairman Louis Lee Sing suggested that the money now invested in the Unemployment Relief Fund (URP) should be diverted to a compulsory national service for the nation's youth. He said it should target unemployed males aged 18-25.
Lee Singh said the program would "harvest" the nation's human resources to the fullest and develop a cadre of skilled, literate developed people while encouraging patriotism.
The head of the country's largest Hindu body rejected the idea saying it's an excuse for the government's inability to deal with crime. Sat Maharaj said such a program would take a problem affecting a small percentage of youth and shift it to the entire nation.
He insisted that law-abiding youth should not be saddled with national service when they could be working on academics.
NJACK leader Makandal Daaga also slammed the idea, saying it must not be controlled by the government, no matter which party is in power.
He fears it might end up like the CEPEP program where workers charged that they were forced to attend a PNM in Woodford Square.
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