Fabi­an Pierre

T&T con­tin­ues to rank in the top ten for homi­cides per capi­ta around the world. This is ac­cord­ing to a source at the Unit­ed Na­tions In­for­ma­tion Ser­vice.The Unit­ed Na­tions In­for­ma­tion Ser­vice has pro­duced re­ports with sta­tis­tics on homi­cides in 207 coun­tries. The cat­e­gories are: Homi­cides by most Pop­u­lous City; by Firearms; by Sex; and To­tal Homi­cides in 2013, and is record­ed per 100,000 cit­i­zens.

Cal­cu­la­tions by the Sun­day Guardian showed that be­tween 2004 and 2009, for every 100,000 peo­ple in Port-of-Spain, an av­er­age of 112 were killed. Fur­ther cal­cu­la­tions un­der To­tal Homi­cides in 2013 show an alarm­ing av­er­age of 330 homi­cides for every 100,000 peo­ple in the coun­try.T&T, mean­while, ranks con­sis­tent­ly among the top ten, with death by firearms emerg­ing as the pri­ma­ry cause, at an av­er­age rate of 305 homi­cides for every 100,000 peo­ple be­tween 2004 and 2009.

The re­ports are com­piled from sta­tis­tics pro­vid­ed by sev­er­al of­fi­cial sources, in­clud­ing the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS), and then sent to the UN.

How many guns are there?

Ac­cord­ing to crim­i­nol­o­gist Re­nee Cum­mings, "A ma­jor part of the crime prob­lem is the il­lic­it guns that find their way in­to the hands of crim­i­nal­ly in­volved youth who seem fas­ci­nat­ed with vi­o­lence. Too many young men are in­volved in gun vi­o­lence as per­pe­tra­tors and vic­tim."In­deed, the UN Re­port on Homi­cide by sex shows a large dis­par­i­ty be­tween males and fe­males in which the num­bers are con­sis­tent­ly and alarm­ing­ly high for males more than fe­males.

Cum­mings urged the Gov­ern­ment to show the coun­try it had the "po­lit­i­cal courage "to dis­man­tle and dis­rupt the il­lic­it gun mar­ket by fo­cus­ing on ac­quir­ing in­for­ma­tion on the num­ber of il­le­gal firearms cir­cu­lat­ing in the coun­try."She said this would lead to in­for­ma­tion for for­mu­la­tion of a des­per­ate­ly need­ed fo­cussed pre­ven­tion and in­ter­ven­tion strat­e­gy to get guns off the streets.