Sep 4

Written by: Godfrey Smith
Thursday, September 04, 2008 

The Caribbean: Losing the fight against crime?

Three observations make the current crime situation in Belize worrisome. The first is that the current wave which began early in the year has become disturbingly elongated. The second is that a cursory review of the news stories will reveal a rise in barefaced robberies in broad daylight. The third is the acute silence of the citizenry. Party politics aside, citizens’ action is the best way to get government action on an issue. Last week, more than one hundred and fifty thousand people marched in Mexico City to protest the volcanic eruption in kidnapping and crime.

Like a new strain of an infectious disease, crime is spreading across the English-speaking Caribbean with no sign of a cure. At an average of 30 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, the region has one of the highest murder rates in the world.

Regrettably, Caribbean Governments’ response to rising crime is often knee-jerk and sophomoric. The response might feature a call for the imposition of the death penalty. Or, as was the case in Belize recently, the detention of suspects for longer periods of time combined with a suspension of their rights. These measures do not tackle the crime epidemic at its roots. The preparedness or lack thereof of Caricom governments in the war against violent crime can be exposed in their answer to a single question. Ask what is the plan to deal with witness intimidation? Then listen for a coherent, workable answer. Witnesses to violent crimes simply refuse to come forward or later refuse to testify. They fear for their lives. They believe, understandably, that the state cannot protect them. The success of a case depends on witnesses. Without them, cases collapse. This is no fault of the police department or the prosecution department.

Caricom through its Regional Task Force on Crime and Security commendably explored the idea of a witness protection program. Witnesses who gave important testimony in dangerous, high profile cases in one Caricom territory would be placed in the program in another Caricom territory. This is unaffordable for all but the richer Caricom countries. Also, witnesses to “routine” violent crimes, not only high-profile ones, feel they are putting their lives at risk.

There is no easy answer. Some countries have tried measures where the name, address and face of a witness remain undisclosed and unseen, even in court, without taking away the accused person’s right to cross-examine that witness.

The Caricom regional strategy calls for national crime control councils. Belize’s national Crime Control Council, which is multi-sectoral, is working on a national crime plan. For any of the regional plans to be credible, it will have to be recognized that the main driving force for the rise in crime and violence, throughout the Caribbean, is intra-regional drug trafficking. The Caribbean is situated in the middle of the north-south drug route. To the south lies the world’s primary source of cocaine; to the north, the primary consumer markets. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that 216 tons of cocaine transit the Caribbean annually en route to the US and Europe. This accounts for one-half of the US and Europe’s cocaine importation.

The drugs come with guns. This accounts for their widespread availability. The trafficking has spin-off effects: violence, spikes in property crime linked to drug addiction, corruption of state institutions, the formation of gangs around neighborhood “dons”. Drug-related rivalries and other rivalries naturally develop between these gangs and bases.

Regional Crime Control Councils will have to accept that the drug-trafficking trade that fuels crime and violence is an overwhelming problem that can’t be eradicated by any single Caribbean country working alone. The street value of the narcotics that transit through the Caribbean is greater than the value of the entire legal economy of the Caribbean. In other words, the cocaine industry has more disposable financial resources than all the governments of the Caribbean put together.

A useful starting point for the Belize Crime Control Council is the Crimes Commission Report of 1992 which remains the seminal, most comprehensive and relevant study on crime in Belize. The report might also be useful for other Caribbean Governments tackling this issue. The report found the underlying causes of crime to be weakness in the family unit, deficiencies in the educational system, economic deprivation, drug trafficking and abuse, infiltration of North American culture and a debased system of values.

New underlying causes can be added. A high number of deportees are sent back to the Caribbean annually. They bring cutting edge criminal behavior learnt in big cities. An estimated 30,000 deportees were sent back to Jamaica, Trinidad and Guyana between 1990 and 2005. High profile, big money, corruption scandals and the question of impunity have lately also contributed to a heightened disrespect for the state and authority in some countries of the Caribbean like Belize and Trinidad and Tobago.

There has been a tendency for Caricom governments to throw the bulk of their resources at strengthening law enforcement measures while ignoring social measures. This flies in the face of studies on the root causes of crime which identify, for the most part, social issues as the underlying causes. While the criminal justice system must be dramatically strengthened in the fight against crime and violence, other strategies must be employed.

Such strategies would target specific neighborhoods of youth associated with risk factors such as being high school dropouts, those involved with gangs, those living in high violence communities and those exposed to substance abuse.

The strategies would address individual risks as well as environmental conditions. Helping youths develop a skill is one response. But so chronic is the problem that merely offering them a scholarship to a vocational school won’t get them in. They have to be persuaded to enter and monitored and encouraged to stay in. Other strategies could include improving the chances for these youth to access and complete secondary school, providing second chances to drop outs, early childhood development interventions and effective parenting training for poor and at risk children. Management information systems and performance indicators for better problem diagnosis have to be developed. Slum-upgrading projects would also have to be undertaken. In St. Kitts and Nevis, there is an office for the resettlement of deportees aimed at reintegrating them into society.

Clearly implementing these strategies on a sustainable basis would require a significant increase in budgetary allocation for the criminal justice sector in national budgets. Sadly, this is beyond the capability of many Caricom governments. As rising cost of living, crime, HIV-Aids, hurricanes and free trade pressurize the small economies of Caricom, the idea of a political union might not seem so far-fetched after all.