The single mother of three continued showing up at her “workplace” where the gangsters ran lottery scams even after she joined a parenting course offered by the Citizen Security and Justice Programme (CSJP), an initiative launched in 2007 by Jamaica’s government to bring down crime in the island’s most violent communities.

But one day something happened. It didn’t involve Crooks’ children or her family but a victim of a lottery scam, a specialty of Montego Bay criminal crews.

This particular person was elderly, ill and at risk of losing her home. By then the parenting course, which covers topics ranging from how to manage money to anger management, had started to sway her.

“I didn’t want my children to grow up like I did. I wanted them to have a better life,” she said.