Two decades after gang violence in Bermuda escalated with the heightened use of guns, the founder of a service that helps deal with its consequences highlighted a record of encouraging outcomes.

However, Gina Spence-Virgil said the intensification of violence in Bermuda presented special challenges for any attempt to rehabilitate perpetrators.

The founder of the Gina Spence Programme told The Royal Gazette: “There are two categories — high-risk and low-risk.

“To me, the type of strategy that the Government is presenting right now probably fits that young person who has got some anger management, is maybe going through situations with their family or is not feeling like they have got any way out.”

She said there was scope to “provide them with those resources and catch them before they go further”.

Ms Spence-Virgil: “The high-risk person, you can’t talk to them, you can’t look at them. They will walk into a party, they will cut somebody’s throat and will walk out as if nothing happened.

“That’s another level of strategy, another level of plan and that’s the level where I have not seen a full plan come forward as yet.”

She added: “There are many jurisdictions like Atlanta and Chicago where they have been able to stem this tide. But it takes hundreds of thousands of dollars and expertise, a team of more than three or four people, to even begin to have an impact.

“If we’re going to do it, we’re going to have to go whole hog.

“Then, of course, Bermuda has its own dynamics — we’re a small community. The person who shot your nephew, his mother could be the secretary at your dentist’s office. So what does that look like?

“The person who shot your niece, the two nanas might go to the same church. What does that look like in a small place like Bermuda?”

Last month the activist queried the island’s new Gang Violence Reduction Strategy tabled in the House of Assembly and awaiting debate by legislators.

On that occasion, Ms Spence-Virgil noted the strategy’s emphasis on fostering “collaboration between victims and perpetrators”, and said there appeared to be less weight given to supporting the victims of violence.

Asked if she thought there was a chance for restorative justice, Ms Spence said: “I can only speak for myself.”

Her family was permanently changed after the gun murder of her son-in-law, James “Junior” Lawes, 26, in 2010, in what police termed an “indiscriminate” attack, on Dundonald Street.

Mr Lawes had married Ms Spence-Virgil’s daughter, Greashena.

Ms Spence-Virgil said her daughter ultimately had the opportunity to meet the perpetrator.

She added: “But there was a whole programme to prepare her to sit down and speak with the person who had committed the crime.

“The perpetrator had to go through a programme so both of them were being prepped for this coming together. But both of them were ready.

“There are people who, when they see that alleged person for the first time in a courtroom, they want to jump over that divider.

“There are people who do not know. They are cold cases. They never sound anyone. So there’s no closure, none whatsoever.

“These are the things people grapple with, because we are so small. Whereas in the US, if something like this happens to you, you can leave, you can change your identity.

“You do not have to come into contact with the alleged person, or the person who has done their time and come out, and sees you across the street or at the supermarket or the laundromat.

“These are the painful dynamics that Bermuda has.”

Ms Spence-Virgil said the community had come from denial of gangs into a time of shootings conducted in “secluded spaces — some took place in parks, in the dark” that evolved to much more public violence, with “people walking up to someone’s house and killing people right in front of others”.

She added: “A huge, drastic and very sad change is women. We had our first woman shot a few years back.”

Ms Spence-Virgil said the prevailing view had been that “it’s very difficult for someone to kill a woman, because a woman could represent your mother, your sister — women represent something different to a man”.

“But once that door was opened, it’s like you can’t turn it back.”

She explained: “It’s a lifestyle. It’s a culture, like anything else. Once a culture sets into a community, it’s very hard to break.”

Ms Spence-Virgil said there could once have been opportunities to advance conversations between gangs that were at odds with one another.

“At the time, I think there was scope,” she said. “We had some of the ‘leaders’ who were willing to come to the table and talk.”

Ms Spence-Virgil said such moves could come with “very serious complications” now.

She said she was heartened by the achievements of her charity in supporting traumatised young people who had lost a parent or loved one to violence.

“We have been able to not only gain the trust of these families and their children, but provide them with specialised, specific care around homicide.”

Ms Spence-Virgil said of her own experience: “We have come through it. We’re not still sitting in that place of hopelessness, pain, anger, resentment.

“We have found our way through it — we still go through it. But we have these tools now. We have things we can use to get through it.”

She said of the violence reduction strategy: “I’m encouraged by any method or plan to address the issues.

“You can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. You can’t dismiss any support that could help.

“The question for me is, what data supports what you’re doing?”