Crime – Time for Serious Action

CRIME and criminal activities have reached an all-time high in our Fair Helen. Natives and residents alike are very fearful for their lives and property, and those of their families. The situation is now crying out for immediate and serious attention. The government and people of St. Lucia now have before them a problem which must be addressed as a matter of urgency.

I say the people of St. Lucia because collectively, we must take responsibility for the crime situation which now prevails in our country. And the stakeholders must work cohesively, one with the other, to tackle the problem. The government, and I do not specifically refer to the incumbent, must recognize that the people may hold the answer to the problem, and must be engaged.

This article is intended to offer some suggestions for dealing with crime and criminal activities in St. Lucia. Indeed, I am admitting beforehand that it’s a layman’s approach. I make the point because many people may rather listen to the ‘Social Scientists’.

I must agree though, that we should adopt a scientific approach to dealing with the problem. And proper documentation must be generated for the archives, and, indeed for posterity.

The city of New York had a serious problem of crime just about two decades ago and Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the Yankees were able to turn the situation around. And so the first suggestion is to obtain information on the best practices for fighting crime. Find out what they did. Fortunately, Mayor Giuliani is still alive today.

The next very important approach is an aggressive programme of sensitization of the community. When it is convenient, the politicians are able to rally their people for one thing or another; there is the Pine Hill Walk which attracts hundreds of people; then there is the Walk for Cancer. Isn’t it possible to rally the community for a “Walk for Crime” to show our disgust with the present crime situation? Couldn’t we walk with our placards? There are many leaders in St. Lucia who are able to initiate discussion on the issue of crime in St. Lucia. We should not leave the discussion to the Talk Shows only.

Then we must take a good look at the Humanities. And a good place to start is the Ministry of Human Services. We have to contend with a Ministry which has been understaffed and undertrained for years.

The few staff members in the Ministry of Human Services who do “battle’ for us in the society in which we live today can’t cope! The fancy projects are good. But fancy projects in a decaying society are of little value.

We need to address some important issues in education. Both in terms of the subjects; content, and the methods; how we teach or facilitate learning. It is clear that we are not paying attention to what works for us in our education system. Most of the people who are involved in crime in St. Lucia are young males. But do we cater sufficiently for those boys at school?

There used to be the Morne Technical College that turned out so many young men who are now in the middle ages but still making a contribution as electricians, plumbers, mechanics, Joiners, Carpenters etc. Some even became lecturers at the now Sir Arthur Lewis Community College. What have we done for those boys who are unable to enter SALCC with CXC certificates? Whatever we are doing now is it adequate?

I had been in the St. Lucia formal education system for 42 years, becoming a school principal. I know there was a plan to make the Ciceron Secondary School a Technical and Vocational School. The plan was change in mid-stream to a wholly academic institution. Academics, academics, and more academics! And so we have scores of lawyers, doctors now more than ever before; and a handful of technicians. An excellent imbalance!

Mrs. Hillary Clinton, while her husband was President of the United States of America, poured a lot of money into a programme called Caribbean Centre of Excellence for Teacher Training, CCETT. It was a programme which allowed classroom teachers to improve the reading skills of boys. I remember quite vividly, that the boys in Grade 2 at the Roseau Combined School in 2007 did very well in a Reading Post Test among all the schools participating in the programme. In fact they performed better than many of their peers in schools in the CCETT programme at the time.

But what did St. Lucia do with the programme? It was dumped! Some person or persons in the Education Ministry did not ‘fancy’ it.

Now the Ministry of Education had trained a cadre of music teachers, to the extent that almost every school had a music teacher. The duty of those teachers was to teach music as a special programme to all students in the school. The music teachers were given a class full time because the World Bank was concerned about the Pupil Teacher ration in Schools. It was also thought that the music teachers did have enough work.

Finally, I would like to touch on School Counsellors. As a school principal, there was the general consensus among my colleagues that a school counsellor was necessary for every Primary School in St. Lucia. However, the Ministry of Education decided that it could only afford one counsellor in each Education District. Of course, the counsellors at the district had to deal with more than a dozen schools with students that were troubled. They just couldn’t cope! And so the litany of social problems continued in our schools to the detriment of our students. What would this redound to? The serious crime situation we have in our society today.