Tony Fras­er

Se­cu­ri­ty in the Caribbean must mean more to cit­i­zens/res­i­dents than mere­ly hav­ing po­lice track down crim­i­nals af­ter they have com­mit­ted crimes. Gov­ern­ments, in­sti­tu­tions and peo­ple have to evolve a so­ci­ety in which all cit­i­zens have avail­able to them op­por­tu­ni­ties to achieve their full hu­man po­ten­tial in a more egal­i­tar­i­an and peo­ple-cen­tred so­ci­ety. It is in such an en­vi­ron­ment re­al hu­man se­cu­ri­ty will be achieved. It is a vi­tal re­con­struc­tion of Caribbean so­ci­ety that the first Caribbean Hu­man De­vel­op­ment Re­port 2012 of the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP) is at­tempt­ing to pro­mote.

In such a re-en­gi­neered so­ci­ety, ac­cord­ing to the vi­sion of the UNDP re­port, a frontal as­sault must be made on a num­ber of the dri­vers of crime. Such causal fac­tors of crime out­lined in­clude un­em­ploy­ment, so­cial dis­place­ment, in­equal­i­ty, the block­ing out of young peo­ple of the low­er so­cial and eco­nom­ic class­es from the main­stream of so­ci­ety, and the ab­sence of a fo­cus on re­al hu­man de­vel­op­ment re­quire­ments such as health and ed­u­ca­tion.

The un­said quest of the re­port is for an elim­i­na­tion/trans­for­ma­tion of the ghet­toes of hu­man un­der­de­vel­op­ment and degra­da­tion in west­ern Kingston, old Port-of-Spain, Cas­tries, George­town and oth­er ur­ban cen­tres across the Dutch and Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean-that in­ci­den­tal­ly is a se­vere­ly re­strict­ed geopo­lit­i­cal re-draw­ing of the Caribbean Basin, per­haps based on UNDP's re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. The re­al­i­ty is that the crim­i­nal cul­ture and the or­gan­i­sa­tions which trade in crime stretch across lan­guage and na­tion­al bound­aries.

Or­gan­ised crim­i­nal­i­ty, the youth gang cul­ture and en­trenched vi­o­lence against women, sex­u­al and phys­i­cal beat­ings to in­still fear and con­trol in do­mes­tic sit­u­a­tions, sto­ries of which are dis­played every day in the me­dia, are found by the re­searchers to be the three ar­eas in which vi­o­lence is en­trenched in the sev­en coun­tries sur­veyed. The sur­vey had 11,000 re­spon­dents with over 450 ex­perts be­ing con­sult­ed by the UNDP team, mak­ing the re­port one based on ev­i­dence and ex­pert re­gion­al opin­ion.

And while Caribbean peo­ple who have been neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed by crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties over the last 25 years need lit­tle con­vinc­ing about the wide­spread and neg­a­tive ram­page of crime through the re­gion, the re­port es­tab­lish­es the deep pres­ence of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties in the re­gion with good qual­i­ty da­ta and ex­am­ples. The rec­om­men­da­tions as to what is to be done fol­low the path of the crim­i­nal up­surge. How­ev­er, the re­port at­tempts to search for an­swers out­side of the typ­i­cal­ly vi­o­lent and re­pres­sive mea­sures now used through­out the re­gion.

"So­cial, eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal em­pow­er­ment of women and oth­er vul­ner­a­ble groups to counter the decades of de­pri­va­tion among these groups caused by pover­ty and so­cial, cul­tur­al po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tion­al prac­tices" is one way for­ward pro­mot­ed by the re­port. The re­moval of firearms, prefer­ably by pub­lic burn­ing to make a point; the pro­tec­tion of vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties; the re­view of cur­rent leg­is­la­tion to elim­i­nate le­gal pro­vi­sions that tend to dis­crim­i­nate against in­dige­nous peo­ple and sex­u­al mi­nori­ties; long-term ef­forts to pro­mote aware­ness of and re­spect for hu­man rights; pro­grammes to pro­mote pro-so­cial be­hav­iours by youth; the pro­mo­tion of fam­i­ly sta­bil­i­ty; al­ter- na­tive forms of pun­ish­ment than in­car­cer­a­tion of youth; im­prove­ment of train­ing fa­cil­i­ties for Caribbean po­lice ser­vices; re­search in­to the caus­es of street gangs and or­gan­ised crime, and trans­for­ma­tion of the po­lice ser­vices and re­form of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, in­clu­sive of a re­gion­al wit­ness pro­tec­tion and in­sti­tu­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion across Cari­com, are all iden­ti­fied as ma­jor ap­proach­es to coun­ter­ing crime.

As ac­knowl­edged by the re­port, a num­ber of the rec­om­men­da­tions have been talked about, even im­ple­ment­ed in part, but the need now is for a ma­jor push to in­sti­tute these and oth­er mea­sures iden­ti­fied through ev­i­dence-based re­search. The rec­om­men­da­tions make sense. In a num­ber of in­stances they go be­yond sim­ply throw­ing de­viants and per­pe­tra­tors in jail to rot and/or to un­der­study hard­ened crim­i­nals, to ap­proach­es that are pre­ven­tive and re­formist in na­ture. Then there are those which seek to un­der­stand caus­es and how to change the re­la­tion­ship be­tween those mar­gin­alised seg­ments of so­ci­ety and those who ben­e­fit from the im­bal­ance and gain priv­i­leges from the sys­tem.

As the re­port urges, no one set of so­lu­tions will suit the ab­solute needs of com­mu­ni­ties rang­ing among Para­mari­bo, St Johns, Kingstown and else­where. So what is nec­es­sary is for Cari­com as a group and in­di­vid­ual so­ci­eties, as­sist­ed by the work al­ready done, to adopt the pat­tern of an ev­i­dence-based ap­proach to mak­ing poli­cies to counter their prob­lems. That the lead au­thor of the doc­u­ment (Prof An­tho­ny Har­riot) and a num­ber of the re­searchers and con­sul­tants are from the Carib-bean is a ma­jor ad­vance on the re­gion for­ev­er look­ing out­side of it­self for so­lu­tions.

How­ev­er, the fun­da­men­tal dif­fi­cul­ty of evolv­ing the struc­tur­al trans­for­ma­tion re­quired to fa­cil­i­tate change is that it is the po­lit­i­cal cul­ture, eco­nom­ic and so­cial struc­tures which cre­at­ed the prob­lems in the first place. Deep­en­ing po­lit­i­cal democ­ra­cy, root­ing out cor­rup­tion from the core of po­lit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and so­cial struc­tures of gov­er­nance in the Caribbean re­quire ma­jor change. Po­lit­i­cal par­ties, leg­is­la­tures and ex­ec­u­tive sys­tems func­tion­ing every­where in the Caribbean are in­her­ent­ly ar­cha­ic/colo­nial, un­re­spon­sive to peo­ple par­tic­i­pa­tion and pro­vide the struc­ture for the prob­lems iden­ti­fied to thrive. Eco­nom­ic and so­cial class sys­tems and struc­tures mar­gin­alise the vast ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple in the mid­dle and low­er lev­els of so­ci­eties while dis­trib­ut­ing re­wards to those at the up­per lev­els.

But as the re­gion­al di­rec­tor of UNDP for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, Her­al­do Munoz, right­ly said at the news con­fer­ence to launch the re­port, there are spaces and places on the mar­gins which can be changed by peo­ple and their non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions. We must all catch a glimpse of what is pos­si­ble. As this col­umn has said on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions over many years, when peo­ple stop al­low­ing them­selves to be­come elec­tion fod­der for par­ties through five-sec­ond, fin­ger-dip­ping democ­ra­cy, when they force par­ties to be­gin se­ri­ous dis­cus­sion of is­sues fac­ing them, when they get away from mes­sian­ic ide­olo­gies that have them wor­ship at the feet of their lead­ers, on­ly then will there be mean­ing­ful change.

Nonethe­less the UNDP re­port with its trans­form­ing ap­proach has rel­e­vance; peo­ple and grass-roots or­gan­i­sa­tions have to start the process of change. It is com­plete­ly il­log­i­cal to ex­pect politi­cians and the up­per eco­nom­ic and so­cial class­es to give up their po­si­tions of dom­i­na­tion and def­er­ence.