Fighting crime must never be treated as a party or election campaign matter, politicians comparing ‘how many’ people ‘died’ or were ‘killed’ under whose watch, as if people’s lives are statistics.
Once upon a time, it used to be said you couldn’t see crime on the front page of any Barbados newspaper (for tourism image protection), but clearly its time has come, as the Caribbean continues to reap what Crime Inc. America continues sowing in the region — from cheaper and harder drugs to untraceable do-it-yourself guns to high-powered assault rifles.
Crime is a national disease that never dies and also exists in police and security forces and at top levels everywhere today – bar none.
And it sometimes, crime’s effect is never felt until the bullets hit home or close-to-home.
Gangs are out-gunning police everywhere and peaceful resolution of conflicts remains a concept.
The rate of killings naturally leads to calls for a return to hanging and citing the fact that the death penalty is still on the books in the USA and people are still being executed there.
No one has a complete formula to end crime — and never will, because no one can stop how people think, act and react in different and similar circumstances.
Killers don’t expect to get caught or die in jail; and life has been significantly devalued by the rates of attrition among young gang members.
Regional governments and security chiefs are very aware of the problem, but the help isn’t forthcoming in ways that they expect from the source nations that prefer to silently monitor instead of acting to prevent the illicit narcotics and arms trades, with small arms now giving way to Big Name guns and armour-piercing ammunition.
Crime is also very cross-border now, as being experienced everywhere.
We can’t talk crime away today, but nor can we only shoot it away, as it’s permanence is what’s led to its dependent and attendant sectors: lawyers, magistrates, judges, judicial and legal systems, police and prisons, prison officers and prisoners.
The teaser in me often asks: ‘How will these institutions function without crime?’
But, whatever the answer, the reality is they are permanent institutions established to ‘handle’ and attend to crime — permanently.
As such, as-much emphasis must go into ensuring certain basic things:
• The justice system must be made and seen to operate fairly and efficiently
• Crooked politicians must have their wings clipped
• Crooked lawyers and judges must be fingered, named and shamed
• Prison Rehab must be seen to be more than refining definitions and cleansing language and include more attendant real and consistent actions, including positive prison re-education and creation of employment opportunities for ex-prisoners
• White-collar crime must be seen to be pursued on a permanent basis at all levels of the society.
• Promote public discussion on Death Penalties
Caribbean people no longer want to hear parties and governments complaining or comparing crime figures before election and after taking office.
They want to see action; they want to see and hear prosecutors prosecute and Special Prosecutors do the work they were appointed to — and to go after corrupt politicians who’ve been accused of pocketing people’s money.
Too many Big People are seen to be immune from prosecution today.
You see one party in office moving to prosecute politicians from another party now in opposition for irregular handling of public funds; and as soon as regime change occurs, the new government instructs the public prosecutors to drop all cases laid against them while in opposition.
And many of these known crooks live to falsely boast that ‘If I am a teef, why am I not in jail?’
Caribbean politicians must also be aware that today’s more exposed electorate strongly believes that ‘Politicians won’t send politicians to jail because they are all the same….’ and that ‘Politicians will always protect their crooked financiers…’
Politicians think mostly in five-year terms and regime change in two-party societies yields fundamental political climate change, in which each ruling party includes people who behave like it’s ‘our turn’ to play in the people’s cookie jar, before the next change.
Similarly, if governments want to invite persons to inform about criminal activities, there must also be effective witness protection programs in place as criminals now eventually get to know who informed on them.
Besides, they’re apparently getting more brazen: a donated police dog that led to many lucrative drug busts was poisoned in one recent case; and in another, a hi-tech customs machine imported to help Customs monitor inside containers was reportedly sabotaged before being commissioned.
So, it’s fruitless and futile to earn or gain political capital from worsening crime, because it’s the nation’s communities that are being scared into submission and young people who’re being sucked into living and dying in the fast lane.
UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron told Caribbean leaders in Jamaica in 2015 his administration was not willing to pay reparations for slavery, but was willing to provide money to build jails in Jamaica to house Jamaicans with criminal records London wished to deport.
President Obama helped worsen the region’s crime wave over a decade ago too, when he instituted the returning of ‘deportees’ of Caribbean origin after completing their sentences and paying time for their crime.
And now, President Trump’s deportation policy will certainly add to the number of deportees with criminal backgrounds being sent into Caribbean nations they either long left or never grew-up in.
The entire region will be affected by this blanket mass deportation of undocumented Caribbean nationals and governments should therefore be prepared or preparing for the social consequences and repercussions, including on children.
We cannot bite crime away, but we can increase the size of our bites and make them big-enough if we work harder to show more will to do what’s to be done, if we’re to get people to help fight crime in their communities.