A dangerous policy
KEVIN BALDEOSINGH Friday, January 18 2008
click on pic to zoom inPoor emergency response: EHS paramedics get help from a security guard to place a homeless boy on a stretcher after he collapsed and appeared to have ...In the first instalment of this series on policy, I stated, “I make two assumptions which, if wrong, can render everything I cite irrelevant. My first assumption is that our political leaders prefer policies that are good for the country; the second is that not more than 20 percent of State officials are corrupt.”
This two-part column on crime policy, I suspect, is therefore irrelevant. But I’ll go ahead anyways. Maybe around 2030 or so, somebody who knows somebody who’s friends with somebody in power will find some use for the analysis given here.
Last week, I presented data which showed that the roots of crime have long been well-planted in our society. The key question, however, is what has caused the plant to flower so poisonously in the past seven years. At the end of 1999, gang-related murders were zero percent of all killings. Altercations accounted for 31 percent, robbery 23 percent, and domestic violence 16 percent of all murders, while 25 percent were for unknown reasons. It was in 2000 that the first gang killings started, accounting for three percent of all homicides. In 2002, this ratio quadrupled to 12 percent of murders. And, by last year, the gang killings made up over half of all murders.
When violent crime goes up, criminologists generally look to three main factors: an increase in the population of 18- to 25-year-old males; a weakened economy; and increased drug trafficking. In respect to the first factor, there was indeed a 23 percent increase in the number of males born between 1981 and 1986. But, for reasons I wot not of, this only manifested as a 12 percent increase in the 15-19 age group in 2000, and a six percent DROP in the 20-24 age bracket in that year. So, unless that reduction is explained by the female half of the cohort, the demographic factor of more males doesn’t account for the rise in crime. And there doesn’t appear to be any correlation with the economy, either. Fiscal indicators improved in the 1990s and crime rates did indeed decrease: yet, from 2000 to now, the crime rate grew along with the economy.
As regards drug trafficking, the last CSO Report on Crime Statistics shows an eight-fold increase in drug seizures between 1998 and 2001, but then a drop to 1998 levels in 2002. In fact, between 1999 and 2003, narcotics offences declined four-fold. There are three possible explanations for this: an actual drop, a reduction in reporting by citizens, or fewer detections by the police. If the third explanation is correct, then police incompetence and/or corruption may be a factor in the rise in gang violence. At the same time, save for a spike in 2001, the percentage of drug-related killings has increased only slightly from six to eight percent over the last few years. If the first explanation is correct, therefore, then the PNM regime’s argument that illegal drugs are the main cause behind the increase in gang violence is wrong.
So the question is, what could have changed to create an increase in murders from under 100 per year in 1999 to nearly 400 in 2007? The answer, in my opinion, can be found three decades ago in another Caribbean country. In the late 1970s, Jamaica’s murder rate suddenly increased four-fold; it is now the highest in the world at over 50 per 100,000 persons. This rise was directly linked to the JLP and PNP political parties forming alliances with the dons of the Jamaican garrisons.
If this is so, then the PNM spokespersons who accuse the UNC of first making such linkages, by giving Muslimeen operatives control over the Unemployment Relief Programme, are right. However, what the same PNMites do not say is that, when the Patrick Manning administration got office in 2000, they did not undo the UNC strategy but instead expanded it to include “community leaders”. No doubt the PNM strategists thought – if, that is, they thought at all – that what occurred in Jamaica 30 years ago wouldn’t happen here. After all, we is Trinis, and them Jamaicans just ignorant.
If my argument about the $300 million URP programme is wrong, however, it is easy to prove it so: just compare the lists of persons murdered in gang violence to the 30,000 fortnightly names on the URP paysheets over the past five years. If I am right, though, then stopping the murder rate doesn’t require blimps or hangings or zero tolerance. It just requires closing down the URP or, at the very least, taking it away from the gang leaders.
But, like I said at the start, that’s why this particular column is totally irrelevant. Since I’m basically pig-headed, however, next week I’ll argue that the URP can be shut down with little political backlash, and outline some other crime-fighting strategies that even the PNM can implemen
