Geisha Kow­lessar

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy has laud­ed the ef­forts of lo­cal law en­force­ment au­thor­ites, pri­mar­i­ly the Po­lice Ser­vice, say­ing they have been in­stru­men­tal in re­duc­ing se­ri­ous crimes, in­clud­ing mur­ders by 25 per cent in 2011. Sandy was speak­ing yes­ter­day at the in­au­gur­al meet­ing of Caribbean/Bermu­da and Latin Amer­i­ca Crime Stop­pers Inc at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain. "I com­mend the law en­force­ment and the com­mu­ni­ties. But even with these suc­cess­es, we still have a lot of work to do, if we are to re­turn our na­tion to the serene place it once was," Sandy said.

Since its in­cep­tion in May 1999, Crime Stop­pers Trinidad and To­ba­go has re­ceived over 16,000 ac­tion­able tips to its hot­line and over 7,000 cas­es cleared, he not­ed.

Re­search con­duct­ed over the past three decades showed sev­er­al fac­tors had in­flu­enced the in­ci­dence of crime and vi­o­lence in any so­ci­ety. Those, Sandy iden­ti­fied as pover­ty and in­equal­i­ty, un­em­ploy­ment and un­der-em­ploy­ment, the grow­ing eco­nom­ic gap be­tween the rich and poor, the speed of ur­ban­i­sa­tion, poor ur­ban de­sign, plan­ning and man­age­ment, lack of ju­di­cious parental guid­ance and the re­luc­tance to pur­sue pos­i­tive op­por­tu­ni­ties. Sandy added his min­istry's ap­proach was to stream­line and ra­tio­nalise the op­er­a­tions of the di­vi­sions un­der the purview of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to op­ti­mise the use of avail­able re­sources. Of­fi­cials, he added, al­so were work­ing hand-in-hand with the oth­er Gov­ern­ment Min­istries who have a stake in the so­cial and ed­u­ca­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. He said: "We have ex­pand­ed our pre­ven­tive pro­grammes at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and have be­gun to chan­nel the en­er­gies of our peo­ple and our youth in par­tic­u­lar, in a pos­i­tive di­rec­tion and away from the lure of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

"The Gov­ern­ment has be­gun its work with the youth pop­u­la­tion, through the im­ple­men­ta­tion of pre­ven­tive pro­grammes, with a view to fi­nal­ly deal­ing with crime and the youth pop­u­la­tion's in­volve­ment in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty." He said the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry al­so has en­gaged a num­ber of stake­hold­ers, both pri­vate and pub­lic, in the de­vel­op­ment of pro­grammes tar­get­ing the youth. Sandy cit­ed a UNDP re­port which called on Caribbean coun­tries to com­plete the shift from an ap­proach to se­cu­ri­ty, that was cen­tral­ly con­cerned with regime pro­tec­tion, to the full adop­tion of a "cit­i­zen se­cu­ri­ty" ap­proach that was con­sis­tent­ly pur­sued in the con­text of hu­man de­vel­op­ment. He said: "The con­cept of 'cit­i­zen se­cu­ri­ty' is as­so­ci­at­ed with se­cu­ri­ty against the threat of crime or vi­o­lence and is used to re­fer to the para­mount se­cu­ri­ty of in­di­vid­u­als and so­cial groups. "It in­cludes in­sti­tu­tion­al and so­cial ac­tions to pro­tect and guar­an­tee ef­fec­tive lib­er­ties and the rights of peo­ple through the con­trol and pre­ven­tion of crime and dis­or­der."

crime stats

Trends in some se­lect se­ri­ous crimes:

2010 2011

Mur­ders: t 6.7% t 25.6%

Wound­ings and shoot­ings: t 10.6% t 13.1%

Kid­nap­ping for ran­som: t 12.5% t 57.1%

Rob­beries: t 16.1% t 27.4%

Lar­ce­ny mo­tor ve­hi­cles: t 19.6% t 34.4%

Lar­ce­ny dwelling house: s 1.6% t 22.8%

Bur­glar­ies and break-Ins: t 8.8% t 19.7%

Nar­cot­ic of­fences: t 5.5% t 6.4%