While most kids his age did homework, watched cartoons or rode bicycles, Chris was acting as a look-out for his drug-dealing father two streets away from his Carenage home.

He was nine when his father was taken away in handcuffs on a string of drug-related and armed robbery charges, and ten when he was sent down to the juvenile detention centre in Diego Martin on two counts of shoplifting.

Across town, another boy, age 16, is being processed for an extended stay at a more secure juvenile facility at Golden Grove. He was arrested for trafficking marijuana at a secondary school.

Seated on the courtroom bench next to him is Tony, who at 16 is closer to manhood than boyhood. He spent three years on the streets before he was picked up on robbery and house-breaking charges.

Tony ran away from home after his mother hogtied him with a piece of cord, doused him with kerosene and began scratching at a box of matches-punishment, the authorities were told, for a youthful indiscretion.

All of these boys share one common feature. They all endured abuse as a child. Sadly, there are hundreds of children in this country who are growing up hungry, neglected and abused. Thousands more are growing up in dysfunctional homes.

The State's juvenile detention centres are replete with their stories, some of which were a difficult eye-opening experience for this reporter and raised more questions about the State's failure to intervene in what were patently clear cases of child abandonment and/or abuse.

To hear these boys tell their stories from the inside of a State lock-up facility, it seems that very little is done to prevent cruelty to children in this country-whether it is physical, emotional or sexual abuse, or exploitation.

In focus group discussions, it also appeared that to the rest of the world, these children do not exist.

Child-rights advocates contend that the State's failure to rescue children who cannot adequately defend or protect themselves was a grave indictment of this country's social delivery system.

Joan Bishop, a former director of Family Services and CEO of Creative Parenting for the New Era, said the system had become unwieldy, fragmented, under-resourced and not readily accessible to those desperately in need.

Child psychologist Dr Karen Moore deemed it "primitive". She said overstretched State agencies were performing too much crisis work and not enough planned intervention.

She spoke of a sexual health minefield of rampant child molestation which cuts across the class barrier, and of a sharp rise in the number of reported incidents of older children sexually abusing younger ones.

"I am seeing younger and younger children,'' she said, adding that the older children were simply acting out behaviour learnt from an adult or what they had seen in the home or on TV.

She said law enforcement authorities needed to confront sexual crimes against children. She added that parents taught their children to fear strangers, but the majority of sex crimes in this country were committed by acquaintances.

She pointed to the State's failure to properly investigate reports of abuse and the lack of credible support systems and alternative care practices to assist vulnerable families.

Bishop and Moore, who both sat on a Cabinet-appointed committee to examine juvenile delinquency and youth crime in 1994, recognised even then that an increasing number of children were taking more than their book bags with them through the school gates.

The 1994 report noted the rapid descent of middle school kids into a world of drugs, sex, alcohol and crime. It identified risk factors like poverty, violence, crime and abuse as contributing to the development of anti-social behaviour and warned that traditional discipline methods and policies might exacerbate rather than remedy the problem.

The 1994 report, which found wide disparities in income and higher poverty rates and lack of tutorial aids among youths in rural areas, said the schools had a responsibility for curbing disruptive, violent and anti-social behaviour.

It advocated as well alternative approaches to custodial sentences for students, including community sentencing.

It also called for the establishment of special intervention groups-involving a student support team, trained counsellors and mentors-to counsel at-risk children.

The report identified the lack of parenting skills and the unravelling family unit as factors contributing to the 90s surge in juvenile crime.

It spoke of distorted role models and warned of a predisposition among the 0-4 and 5-9-year-olds to imitate deviant or criminal behaviour of the 13-25-year-olds.

"Many of these children are living and developing in neighbourhoods where there are limited positive role models for appropriate social behaviour," said the 1994 report, adding that "frequently the only adults they see who are making a decent living are making it through illegal activities".

Moore said she was frightened by what she saw ten years ago-evidence of heavy drug dealing and drug use, drinking binges and prostitution rings in seven-year schools.

Why was nothing done?

Well, according to Moore: "It didn't hit the headlines and the School Guidance Unit was simply not listened to."

She said the violence that was now spilling out of the schoolyards was just the smoke. "The fire is right behind," she said, adding that 12 years ago children "were telling me if you don't join the gang, they beat you".

And, the school guidance officers knew it, she said, adding that it was happening in some so-called prestige schools and not just on the east-west corridor.

The 1994 report made much the same findings as the just released Deosaran 2004 study on benchmarking violence and delinquency in the secondary school.

It also made some of the same recommendations, including the use of trained psychologists and diagnostic and remedial teachers.

Some of the young men now "doing time" said they had no one to talk to when they were in trouble.

One teenager, on an armed robbery charge, said maybe his story would have had a different ending if he had had the benefit of counselling at school or in his community.

All of the young lads-as they are called at the Youth Training Centre (YTC)-said they felt they were lone, unheard voices and were frustrated and angry.

They admitted that they were at the beginning of a slippery slope when they were held on their respective charges. One 18-year-old said jail might well have saved his life. He said he grew up too fast in a too-crowded stash house, where sex, drugs and violence were an integral part of his daily existence.

Today, he is part of a mentoring group that is using scare tactics on their peers on the other side of the razor wire.

In dramatic skits, they explain to young people on the outside that there are ways to get money besides going out and taking it from other people.

Prison officials at YTC report that the message is getting across not only to their own peer group but also to adults. The schools agree that the message from the YTC group was far more effective than the regular chats from law enforcement authorities.

The boys tell their stories with drama and just a little bit of humour. They say they are happy to make a difference-even if it is to stop one boy from following them into prison.

David, 19, who was caught in a downward spiral of menial jobs and botched burglaries before his incarceration, said he gives it to them "raw". He said he doesn't hold anything back.

He paints a vivid tale of his bad boy ways and then hooks them in by saying, "Now watch where I am."

Asked how he felt about his sojourns out of lock-up to visit schools not unlike the one he attended before his arrest, he said: "In prison, you murder shame and lock up pride."

One of his mates put it more bluntly: "If they send me in a mosque to preach Christianity... I going."

- Continues next week