Every government that has come into power in the past few years as crime has spiralled out of control has tried exactly the same strategy: increased equipment for the police, stiffer penalties, crime plans and outsourcing the problem to foreigners.
I don't think I need to explain further the success, or lack thereof, of this "strategy." The problem with this "plan" is simple, this is not the solution to solving a crime problem. Increased policing, even the death penalty, are not measures that will stop crime in the long term. While Jack Warner was still part of the present day government there were rumblings of reinstating the death penalty. This was supposed to be the end all and be all to solving crime definitively. I beg to differ.
Reinstatement of the death penalty will no doubt come up again given the recent crime wave, but the death penalty is no solution but rather an admission of failure from people bereft of any further ideas as to how to solve the crime problem.
Of all First World countries, only one still practices the death penalty, The United States of America. The death penalty has been abolished all across Europe and other developed nations. Strange though, most of these nations do not seem to have a crime problem. We never hear travel advisories to the likes of France, Spain, Italy due to the crime situation.
All of that being said, it is my belief that the solution to the crime situation lies neither in policing nor punishment, indeed, such things only come into effect after a crime has been committed. If we are really serious about at least reducing crime before criminal acts have been committed we have to go back to basics, we have to return to the family, the schools and the community.
The basic human experience has everything to do with our criminal element. Men, particularly fathers, hold the key to the crime problem in this country. There are far too many absentee and irresponsible fathers abandoning their children.
It is no secret that the majority of murders committed in this country are by youths. Youths without guidance will always go astray. The burden does not lie only with the school system or the government to raise children correctly, the onus is on those who bring them into the world. Personal responsibility to those within our care goes a long way. There is a consequence to shirking your responsibility to your family and every day it seems, someone in this country pays with his life for the negligence of others.
The solution to crime does not lie in policing and punishment, but it lies within the family unit, the school system and the community. So the next time any government produces a "crime plan" I wish not to hear about states of emergency, increased police presence or of the purchase of new vehicles. This is not a crime plan, this is simply placing a band aid on a large open wound. It is simply an attempt by the government to appear they are taking the crime problem seriously by increasing visibility.
Crime plans involve uplifting depressed communities, reaching out to disenfranchised youths and taking proper care of our children. The family, schools and communities should be central to any crime plan that is to be put forward.
Many of our citizens like to comfort themselves in the crime situation by thinking it is all drug-related and those being killed are nothing but gang members and drug dealers. These problems run much deeper than that. I am sure there is virtually no one in this country who has not been touched by crime in some way or the other. Regardless of your community or lifestyle, crime is a problem for all of us.
I am not privy to any type of special information. In fact a simple Internet search will yield most of what I was able to describe here. This begs the question, why is it that governments, both past and present, with all the access to resources and intelligence, have not been able to come up with a feasible or proper crime solution?
Why is it that crime continues to spiral and get worse? The simple truth is that it is more convenient for politicians to talk about fixing crime than to actually fix crime. The crime situation is too valuable a political tool to be lost.Until such time that our government and politicians decide to stop playing politics and stop thinking about the next election, there will be no solution to this problem.
Attish Kanhai
Chaguanas