Carla Zuill: Are there gangs in Bermuda?

Terry Lister: There's an element of socialisation, young men congregating together and because we're hanging out on the corner every afternoon after work, does that make us a gang? It makes us a group, a bunch of friends. Is that wrong? Well, no, if we're out watching traffic, see the girls come by...We're just chilling. When it goes from us just hanging out to going and breaking into people's houses, stealing bikes, etc. then it's a criminal element. If you want to attach the word gang to it , you can. But it's really gone from a social element to a criminal one. When we're looking at it, we're interested in the criminal activity.

Zuill: So if they're not going out and causing problems, then you won't classify them as a gang?

Lister: And I have absolutely no problems saying 15 young men standing on a corner after work, dirty because they just came from their construction site or wearing their waiter's uniform, they can chill just like anybody else.

Zuill: Reflecting on the last six months how do you feel about the rising occurrences of incidents using firearms?

Lister: Because the numbers are always small and the media does a very effective job of reporting them, you can always be given the impression that the country is falling apart. For a person to be murdered, from his brutal murder, it could only take just one person to do it. Should you then classify all young males as being violent because one person committed a murder?

See, this is the way we've been trying to approach it since we've been the Government. If you recall the continued outcry from the authorities in St. George's about the troubles with the young men. I went down there and I talked to them. I talked through the Press at them - at them being the right word - saying if there are 20 young men hanging out then maybe two or three in that group who are on the verge of becoming criminals, but there may be 17 or 18 who in time will marry and raise families and be regular, old members of society in like 20 years from now. Some of them will be talking about how bad the youth of the day are. You can't just throw everybody away because you see them congregating on the corner.

Zuill: But do you think the youth of today are more violent?

Lister: Taking this group today and comparing them to ten years ago, we (society) are more violent.

There are individuals in this group who are prone to violence in a way that previous groups haven't been. They are far more willing to settle their differences with weapons, which is something that we just didn't experience in the past.

Zuill: But why?

Lister: I hate to fall in with everybody and use clich?s, but I'm forced to. I think a lot of it comes from what they see on the television. They do what they think Americans are doing. It's a very negative influence. That's the only thing I can come up with.

I'm even more concerned about the level of violence amongst young girls because the girls, in a sense, feed the boys. If they were not interested in that, the level of violence amongst the boys would come down. But because there are so many young girls pushing the guys along ... I think that's really a negative and it's happening all throughout the high schools.

Zuill: Some people think there's a lot of trouble on the Island because of the lack of God in the youth's lives...

Lister: They are 100 percent right because Sunday school teaches values and you just pick up limits in your mind. Your own set of values. School adds values, home adds values, you have values everywhere you go and unfortunately if you're in the wrong place, you pick up the wrong set of values. But my favourite argument is that of parents. When I went out to Dockyard (after the shooting of Shundae Jones), one of the reporters said to me, `Minister, there's a 15-year-old boy involved in this at 3 o'clock in the morning. Do you think this indicates there's nothing around for 15-year-olds to do?' I said no. A 15-year-old should be in his bed at that time of the morning - that's what he should be doing. Until we as adults and parents amend this, we are not going to get anywhere.

Zuill: Do you think a curfew should be imposed on youth under a certain age?

Lister: No! Does that sound contrary to what I just said? Am I contradicting myself? Parents are responsible and the young people themselves are responsible...and it shouldn't be up to society to govern all of us and there's no magic time that suits everybody. I hear people calling for curfews for youth under 18 for 11 o'clock on Saturday night. I'm a young person and I'm trying to take a girl on a date and I can't take her to a 9 p.m. movie? That's ridiculous.

Zuill: Are you affected personally when your Ministry is publicly criticised?

Lister: I find it very disappointing but from day one, I've always taken a long term view. We can't fix these problems overnight. We have to have a plan and I like this Ministry from the point of view that we have all of the elements, other than education and health who play big parts, which involve fixing people who actually reside here.

Those people who can't quite get it right in the school system end up on our desk through the National Training Board, Training and Employment Services. Those people who feel they are not getting the right job opportunities end up coming across us through Immigration...so through this Ministry we are trying to help people rebuild their lives. We're taking broken people and trying to help them turn around.

I can't get upset about the criticism... I'm not supposed to. I have to look at it (crime) across time and try to see a change taking place in people's lives. That's why I'm a big supporter of the Drug Court for that exact reason. It's going to have a real good impact. When we get community service orders working properly, that'll have another big, positive impact. Then we'll be able to use the empty cells as a threat, rather than a reality.

Zuill: How did you feel when you received the news of Jones' brutal killing?

Lister: I was very shocked by it, on one hand. On the other hand, I was not surprised at all. One of the people in our community in the West End, came to my house one afternoon a few weeks ago and said: "Look, I need to talk to you. Young guys around here have been talking. They asked me to come and see you." This person (a few weeks after the Tekl? Mallory verdict) said: "We're not happy with this, we don't believe we're going to get justice in this country and we'll take the law into our own hands. We just want you to know. You're going to see cars fire-bombed, houses fire-bombed, and then we're going to kill people."

I was warned.

Zuill: But what did you do with that information?

Lister: Nothing, there's nothing I can do with that, but I was told that that was going to happen. I tell the Police, they know ... but you can't shadow the movement of every young person who might be involved in something. Using the word `gang' loosely, which gang do you shadow? Who are the good guys Who are the bad guys? You don't know. The best that we can do from a preventative point of view is to do our very best to ensure there aren't a lot of guns coming in, we believe there are guns here anyway, that we're talking to people about their own personal standards, moral values, etc. to try and get people to constrain themselves from a form of behaviour.

But with the very best Police Service in the country, in the world, you can't stop that kind of behaviour. In the case of the young Jones murder, if someone would have given a tip-off, then something could have been done. Without a tip, we can't stop it.

Zuill: People seem reluctant to go to the Police out of fear? Is there some sort of Witness Protection Programme in place?

Lister: We're looking at some legislation now that will impact on this. We're very unhappy with the outcome of the Mallory case for that exact reason and we are keen to make sure that we don't have a repeat of that in this (Jones) particular case.

Zuill: Are you bracing for retribution?

Lister: What we can do from here on in is to make sure that we identify the players, know who the people are in the various groups. The Police have very good intelligence, but to actually foil each and every time is very hard.