Yvonne Ba­boolal

Be­ing ap­point­ed to head a team to probe the caus­es of crim­i­nal­i­ty is a big task for Pro­fes­sor Sel­wyn Ryan and one to which he is look­ing for­ward. "It's a big task. One I am look­ing for­ward to," Ryan said in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day. He was ap­point­ed head of the crime team by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. The PM made the an­nounce­ment in Par­lia­ment on Sun­day as she an­nounced that the cur­few hours have been re­duced to be­tween 11 pm and 4 am and dis­closed sev­er­al plans to deal with the crime prob­lem. Ryan said he was sur­prised he was asked to head the team.

He said he al­ready had sub­mit­ted a draft plan to Per­sad-Bisses­sar on how he felt the team should pro­ceed with the probe in­to the cause of crim­i­nal­i­ty. He said he pre­ferred to wait un­til he got feed­back from her, how­ev­er, un­til he dis­closed de­tails of the plan. He said: "There was an agree­ment in prin­ci­ple that I will un­der­take the ex­er­cise and I sub­mit­ted a draft in­di­cat­ing how it should be done. "I don't think it would be ap­pro­pri­ate to dis­close the de­tails of it at this point." Ryan al­so was un­able to di­vulge any in­for­ma­tion on who were the oth­er mem­bers of the team, say­ing it was all still in its em­bry­on­ic stages.

Af­ter a state of emer­gency was de­clared in 1971 dur­ing the Black Pow­er Rev­o­lu­tion, Ryan was ap­point­ed by then prime min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams as a mem­ber of the Wood­ing Com­mis­sion to look in­to the Con­sti­tu­tion. The team trav­elled all over the coun­try get­ting the views of peo­ple. Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad said the team was one of the Gov­ern­ment's medi­um to long-term mea­sure in deal­ing with the crime prob­lem.