Let's start with the numbers:
T&T:
�2 403 murders last year
�2 Down one per cent from2013
�2 Murder rate: 30 per 100,000
�2 World ranking: 13
�2 Clear-up rate 15 per cent(Jan to June)
�2 Killed by police: 46, or 3.4per 100,000
Jamaica:
�2 1,005 murders last year
�2 Down 16 per cent from 2013
�2 Murder rate: 37 per 100,000
�2 World ranking: eight
�2 Clear-up rate 37 per cent(full year)
�2 Killed by police: 109, or 4.0per 100,000
We're still slightly better than Jamaica–but the gap is narrowing. Back in 1977 Jamaica's murder rate was five times T&T's. In 2007 it was double. Now it is just 23 per cent higher. Of the 23 countries worldwide with a murder rate worse than 20 per 100,000, 17 are in the English-speaking or Hispanic Caribbean. That's a quick count based on data for the most recent year to hand–so, 2014 for some of the Caribbean countries and 2012 or a little earlier, where I've used the UN stats.
And here's the 2014 story for some Caricom countries. Murders Rate per 2014 100,000 St Kitts-Nevis 24 44 Belize 124 37 Bahamas 122 32 Guyana 147 20 St Lucia 34 19 Barbados 23 8 OK, not so nice. And what, precisely, should we do about it? Top priority–stop looking for instant answers. In opposition before 2010, the UNC understandably railed against the high murder rate. Remember those campaign ads? The Government was told to "do something."
From the end of 2001 to May 2010, with Patrick Manning as prime minister, the monthly murder rate averaged 30.5– around one a day. From June 2010 to December 2014, with Kamla Persad-Bissessar as prime minister, the monthly murder rate averaged 32.7. Those numbers mask year-toyear variation. The murder rate rose fast in 2001, when Basdeo Panday was personally responsible for the national security ministry. It moved on up until 2009, then came down slightly.
There was a low point in 2011– our emergency year. Since then, the murder rate has crept back up. Caribbean-wide, the sensible answers are all long, hard-slog. Police reform. Judicial reform, to cut back those multi-year trial delays. Border controls to reduce the gun and drug flow (offshore patrol vessels, anyone?). And a crackdown on corrupt officials.
It would help to reform and humanise the prisons, with more young inmates taking CSECs and job training, in place of an intensive BSc in Brutality and Gang Membership Studies. Progress is painfully slow. Reforms take years to implement, and decades to bring results. Real progress means taking on established interests– police, lawyers, corrupt officials, that sort of stuff. Politicians want instant answers.
That means glitzy hardware. And hanging. Except, hanging is obviously not an answer to anything–as most Cabinet ministers are bright enough to know, and as some readily admit when chatting privately. For starters, the detection rate for gang-related gun crimes is painfully low. When killers do get caught, it's often a domestic violence case with an easily tracked culprit. Gangsters are not risk-averse. That's why they do crime rather than accountancy.
They are not deterred by retaliation from gangland rivals. They are not deterred by gun battles with the police. So they won't be deterred by the vanishingly small risk of being tracked down, arrested, put on trial, found guilty, then losing a local appeal and losing again in the Privy Council. Back to Jamaica. Murders are down. But the big drop last year was in police killings. There were 109. That is down from 236 in 2013. From 2006 to 2013, there was an annual average of 239 Jamaican police killings.
That was a per capita rate of 8.7 per 100,000 population–higher than the overall murder rate for Barbados. Only 66 countries worldwide have a murder rate higher than eight per 100,000. The per capita rate for police killings in the US is 0.1 per 100,000 on the FBI estimate, and 0.35 based on figures from the "Killed by Police" unofficial monitors.
Ferguson notwithstanding. If you're a young black man who wants to get shot by police, go to Jamaica. In March and April, Jamaica's Independent Commission of Investigations charged eight police officers from the rural parish of Clarendon with murder.
Up to 40 related killings were investigated. Many of them had been previously recorded as gang-related murders. Since then, police killings have nosedived. More generally, the number of gang-related murders officially recorded by Jamaica's police was down by 36 per cent last year. Makes you think?