Mick­ela Pan­day

Giv­en the crime epi­dem­ic that has been plagu­ing our na­tion over the last 15 years and suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments' in­abil­i­ty to deal with the is­sues of de­tec­tion and pre­ven­tion of se­ri­ous crimes, we need to ask our­selves, cou­pled with the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cri­sis, if stronger mea­sures are not im­ple­ment­ed im­me­di­ate­ly to deal with ris­ing crime, is Trinidad on the path to be­com­ing a failed state?

Da­ta col­lect­ed from the Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (Ca­pa) Unit of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in­di­cates that vi­o­lent crime, in par­tic­u­lar mur­der and kid­nap­ping, in­creased in the 1980s, be­gan de­creas­ing dur­ing the mid-1990s, and rose again in the 2000s.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port ti­tled, A Time-Se­ries Analy­sis of Crime in Trinidad and To­ba­go con­duct­ed by the Sir Arthur Lewis In­sti­tute of So­cial and Eco­nom­ic Stud­ies, "In 1994, 143 mur­ders were com­mit­ted, but by the end of 1995 the mur­der fig­ures were re­duced to 122. Over the next four years (1996 to 1999) the mur­der rate steadi­ly de­clined."

By the end of 2000 and the be­gin­ning of the new mil­len­ni­um, the mur­der rate be­gan to rise again. In 2001 mur­ders in­creased by 23 per cent as against the 1995 fig­ures; 2002: 40 per cent; 2003: 88 per cent; 2004: 113 per cent; 2005: 216 per cent; 2006: 202 per cent and 2007: 224 per cent. No­tably dur­ing the pe­ri­od 1995 to 2001, no kid­nap­pings oc­curred.

Fur­ther sta­tis­tics from Ca­pa notes that dur­ing the six-year pe­ri­od of 2002-2007, there were 79,989 un­solved se­ri­ous crimes, in­clud­ing mur­der, kid­nap­ping, rape and rob­bery with ag­gra­va­tion. Dur­ing that pe­ri­od, mur­ders had risen by 40 per cent; the de­tec­tion rates was less than ten per cent, and the con­vic­tion rate of those charged was less than one per cent. Dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2010 to 2015, the mur­der rate climbed at its high­est to 485 peo­ple, and at its low­est to 354 peo­ple.

That be­ing said, if the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion is se­ri­ous about tack­ling the crime epi­dem­ic head on it must first demon­strate it has the po­lit­i­cal will to do so by ac­knowl­edg­ing and ad­dress­ing the chal­lenges it faces in its ef­fort to re­duce crime, name­ly, our over­bur­dened le­gal sys­tem, high un­em­ploy­ment, dis­en­fran­chised youth, and the de­struc­tive ef­fect on our so­ci­ety of gangs, drugs, and il­le­gal weapons.

On the is­sue of our over­bur­dened le­gal sys­tem, one need on­ly look at the cur­rent back­log of mat­ters in the mag­is­trates' court, which deals with 90 per cent of crim­i­nal mat­ters in the coun­try, caused as a re­sult of ad­journ­ments.

Ac­cord­ing to Jerome R Mark, in his re­port, Ex­am­in­ing a Cul­ture of De­lay and Ad­journ­ments: Crim­i­nal Case Pro­cess­ing in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Mag­is­trates' Court-2007, "42.8 per cent of cas­es sur­veyed had three or more ad­journ­ments. Of those cas­es ad­journed 52.6 per cent re­late to the non-ap­pear­ance of ei­ther the com­plainant or the de­fence or both." The re­main­der of the ad­journ­ments re­lat­ed to the courts' in­abil­i­ty to pro­ceed due to the par­ties, or in some cas­es the court, not be­ing ready to pro­ceed. And that's just the be­gin­ning.

Un­til we ad­dress and fix this fu­tile dai­ly ex­er­cise of ad­journ­ing with­out hear­ing, in­cur­ring ex­pens­es in trans­port­ing pris­on­ers from jail to court and back again un­nec­es­sar­i­ly, com­pound­ed by di­lap­i­dat­ed cour­t­hous­es, un­der­staffing and a gen­er­al feel­ing of de­spair en­gen­dered by in­sti­tu­tion­alised de­lay, there will nev­er be a re­al im­prove­ment in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice or a re­duc­tion in crime.

Not to be for­got­ten are the con­se­quences of this mess. Pris­on­ers, in­no­cent or guilty, can on­ly seethe at the un­fair­ness of it all, and are like­ly to be­come an­ti­so­cial as a re­sult. And of course, pub­lic con­fi­dence in the sys­tem be­comes erod­ed and there­fore, peo­ple look to al­ter­na­tive un­law­ful ways to re­solve dis­putes.

Which brings us back to the ques­tion whether we are on the path to be­com­ing a failed state, de­fined as, "a state whose po­lit­i­cal or eco­nom­ic sys­tem has be­come so weak that the gov­ern­ment is no longer in con­trol." If, ac­cord­ing to Robert I Rot­berg, na­tion states fail when "they are con­sumed by in­ter­nal vi­o­lence and cease de­liv­er­ing pos­i­tive po­lit­i­cal goods to their in­hab­i­tants. Their gov­ern­ments lose cred­i­bil­i­ty, and the con­tin­u­ing na­ture of the par­tic­u­lar na­tion-state it­self be­comes ques­tion­able and il­le­git­i­mate in the hearts and minds of its cit­i­zens," there can be no gain­say­ing if we con­tin­ue along this path, our coun­try very well may con­tin­ue to spi­ral down­wards in­to an­ar­chy.