Dr Bhoe Tewarie

Once again, the is­sue is mur­ders. The is­sue is crime. And af­ter the kid­nap­ping in Val­sayn ear­li­er this week, wor­ry about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of more kid­nap­pings. The home in­va­sions come and go, and may come again; but the fear nev­er goes away, and the un­cer­tain­ty per­sists. What is the fu­ture of fear in this coun­try? What is the fu­ture of un­cer­tain­ty in T&T? Can a fu­ture of peace, sta­bil­i­ty, greater or­der and more ef­fec­tive per­son­al safe­ty be en­vis­aged? If it can­not be en­vis­aged, then what­ev­er needs to be done can­not be done.

Per­haps the ob­vi­ous is not ob­vi­ous enough to im­pose mean­ing on us.

T&T has a new Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and a new Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. We have two min­istries now re­spon­si­ble for De­fence and Law En­force­ment. We have a new Gov­ern­ment. But the mur­ders con­tin­ue, crime per­sists. Fear and un­cer­tain­ty re­main. Cit­i­zens are torn. On the one hand: “Give the Gov­ern­ment some time. It is on­ly two months.” On the oth­er: “We want re­sults; we want to see a re­duc­tion of mur­ders and we want to see crime brought un­der con­trol.”

Maybe the prob­lem with crime was the pre­vi­ous com­mis­sion­ers? But did they have any valu­able in­tel­li­gence? Maybe the prob­lem was the pre­vi­ous min­istry? But was there any valu­able in­tel­li­gence there? Maybe the prob­lem was the pre­vi­ous min­is­ter. But would his of­fice have had valu­able in­tel­li­gence? Maybe the prob­lem was the last gov­ern­ment? Would they have had valu­able in­tel­li­gence? Can there be any pos­si­bil­i­ty of build­ing on any gains of the past and mak­ing change in­to the fu­ture? Can the new Gov­ern­ment of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar build on any pre­vi­ous gains or as­sets and al­so bold­ly in­tro­duce new ap­proach­es and meth­ods they might now deem nec­es­sary?

The new com­mis­sion­er, min­is­ters, min­istries and Gov­ern­ment can, each one in turn, make a dif­fer­ence. And, if they work well to­geth­er, they might be able to achieve a lot. The rel­e­vant ques­tion, though, is how? What do they need to do to bring mur­ders down? What do they need to do to tip the scale so that fear, now per­va­sive among the cit­i­zen­ry, shifts to the crim­i­nal el­e­ment? How does a gov­ern­ment, through its com­mis­sion­er, min­is­ters and min­istries, bring down the mur­ders and crimes, es­pe­cial­ly vi­o­lent crimes?

Must it be­gin, per­haps, with a deep­er un­der­stand­ing of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty in this coun­try, and a re­al­is­tic as­sess­ment of the sup­port in­fra­struc­ture that makes crim­i­nal­i­ty suc­cess­ful? Be­cause crime pays so well in this coun­try, and the risk of con­se­quence to crim­i­nals is so low. As long as crime con­tin­ues to pay, it will flour­ish.

What is the sup­port­ive, in­ter­lock­ing in­fra­struc­ture that makes crime pay so well and keeps the risk of con­se­quence so low? And what is the na­ture of the per­va­sive cor­rup­tion that glues the in­ter­lock­ing in­fra­struc­ture to­geth­er? One has to as­sume that with a sup­port­ive in­fra­struc­ture that makes mur­ders, crime, gangs, guns, drugs and oth­er re­lat­ed mat­ters so re­ward­ing and with so lit­tle risk and with such low fear of con­se­quence, that per­va­sive well-or­gan­ised cor­rup­tion is part of the mix.

How can the crim­i­nal sys­tem and net­work in T&T be dis­rupt­ed, if the re­al­i­ty of its ex­is­tence, and the el­e­ments that must be there to sus­tain it suc­cess­ful­ly, are not ac­knowl­edged, un­der­stood, iden­ti­fied and at­tacked? How can gangs be con­tained, and mur­ders and crime be ef­fec­tive­ly re­duced, if the sys­tem for law and or­der is not pre­pared to ad­dress the cor­rup­tion which glues it all to­geth­er?

Did the elec­torate vote to change the com­mis­sion­er, min­is­ter, min­istry and the gov­ern­ment? Yes, they did. And now that these changes have been made, they want to see re­al changes in their lives. They do not wish to con­tin­ue to live in fear of crime. The on­ly thing that will re­duce this per­sis­tent fear is if cit­i­zens wit­ness a dra­mat­ic re­duc­tion in mur­ders and vi­o­lent crimes. And, if they be­gin to ex­pe­ri­ence that the law and agen­cies of law en­force­ment, and the jus­tice sys­tem, are shift­ing the bal­ance of pow­er against the crim­i­nals, so that fear is on the crim­i­nal side. Un­less crime be­comes high risk and so much less lu­cra­tive that it does not make sense, be­cause the con­se­quences for vi­o­lent crim­i­nal­i­ty are so se­vere, it will not lose its at­trac­tion. Un­less the sup­port­ing in­fra­struc­ture for suc­cess in crime is sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly dis­man­tled through an as­sault on the val­ue chain of cor­rup­tion that al­lows crim­i­nal en­ter­prise to thrive, we will con­tin­ue to have a lot of busy ac­tiv­i­ty but no de­ci­sive or de­ter­mi­nate ac­tion on crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty.

It is a mat­ter of po­lit­i­cal will, hon­est, coura­geous gov­ern­ment and in­sti­tu­tions be­ing made ac­count­able.