Former Police Commissioner Jonathan Smith called yesterday for better results from those working to prevent Bermuda’s at risk children falling into gang crime.He told the joint select committee on violent crime and gun violence that “legislatively binding requirements” were needed to ensure the “huge amount of work” already being done to guide youngsters in the right direction was effective.“There are hundreds of dedicated professionals working in education; others as social workers, financial assistance, speech and language pathologists and behaviour modification specialists - the list goes on,” he said.“Hundreds doing the work; it is costing us millions but is it working with optimum results? I’m inviting the committee to consider this: is all of this work as results-focused as it needs to be?“If it is, then why have we had 35 murders in 11 years? Why do gangs attract more of our mostly young men?“Why is the conventional belief that this is all getting worse, not better? Why are disputes being settled with bullets and not words?”He told MPs that such legislation committing Government and partner organisations to put resources and staff into crime reduction objectives already existed in the UK.Mr Smith, Police Commissioner between 2001 and 2006, described how the gang problem had intensified since he joined Bermuda Police Service in 1979.“Gang warfare, in itself, is not a new phenomenon,” he said. “There were murders in the 1980s and 1990s which were extremely violent and had roots in the gang and drug culture.“Where baseball bats, clubs, knives and machetes once settled these battles, the weapon of choice became the firearm. Clearly, the more ready access to firearms has accelerated the severity of these retributive gang attacks.”Mr Smith, who recently said he would think seriously about running as a PLP election candidate, said there had been more than twice the number of murders in the last five years than between 2000 and 2005.Police estimate that the Island has 19 gangs with about 350 members, he said, adding: “Somewhere under ten percent of the gang members have been victims of murders.“In addition to the murders and attempted murders, there are several hundred firearm-related incidents under investigation.”The former Commissioner said the figures graphically illustrated the escalating problem but the numbers had become “numbing”.He cited a 1999 British report called the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, which pinpointed risk factors in children aged eight to ten predicting a high probability of offending.They include having a convicted parent or delinquent sibling, poor parental supervision, a disrupted family life, low school attainment and poor concentration. “During my police career, I saw significant consistencies with the findings of the Cambridge Study, the predictors and risk factors and the circumstances of criminality in Bermuda,” said Mr Smith.“We know that persistent offenders tend to produce the next generation of delinquent children. That is why it is so critically important to target children at risk with prevention programmes in childhood in order to break this cycle.”He said Bermuda had the advantage of knowing the name of every high school boy aged eight to ten making early intervention entirely possible.Other measures recommended by Mr Smith to the committee included:l amendments to the Proceeds of Crime Act;l amendments to the law to allow adverse inferences to be drawn from a defendant’s silence;l steps to consider witness anonymity in court cases; andl consideration of enhanced technical surveillance legislation.The joint select committee meets again on Thursday (December 16) at the Senate chamber at 10am.