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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Criminals more brazen

...jus­tice sys­tem high­ly chal­lenged

by

20130223

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Re­nee Cum­mings says crim­i­nals are be­com­ing more brazen be­cause they know the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is high­ly chal­lenged and un­able to re­spond to crim­i­nal trends in time. She said the ser­vice is al­so in need of an­a­lyt­ic in­ves­tiga­tive sup­port when it comes to in­ves­ti­gat­ing homi­cides.

Giv­ing her views on the coun­try's spi­ralling crime rate, which prompt­ed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to sum­mon the heads of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty forces to a spe­cial meet­ing of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil on Fri­day to ham­mer out strate­gies to com­bat es­ca­lat­ing mur­ders, Cum­mings said there was need for a more sys­tem­at­ic think­ing re­gard­ing the pat­terns of homi­cides in T&T.

"What we are see­ing are more male ego homi­cides, male-on-male killings, grudge and re­venge homi­cides, many of these killings are ho­n­our con­tests in re­sponse to triv­ial dis­agree­ments," she said. "We have al­so wit­nessed the grudge and re­venge homi­cides which are more pur­pose­ful and de­ter­mined in na­ture."

Cum­mings, a crim­i­nal psy­chol­o­gist and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion spe­cial­ist, said the re­cent be­hav­iour il­lus­trates that some­thing seems to have dis­turbed the equi­lib­ri­um of the streets. How­ev­er, she felt, T&T was not fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of Ja­maica. "But we are no longer look­ing like Trinidad & To­ba­go. We are way too rich in fi­nan­cial and hu­man cap­i­tal to be strug­gling this hard and long with a crime prob­lem."

Crime pre­ven­tion, Cum­mings said, was not the on­ly ap­proach. "Rad­i­cal ref­or­ma­tion is need­ed in law en­force­ment lead­er­ship and man­age­ment for polic­ing to be­come an are­na of ev­i­dence based poli­cies. There must be a pen­e­tra­tion of sci­ence in­to po­lice prac­tice."

She feels there is a huge dis­con­nect be­tween in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tice re­search in crim­i­nal jus­tice and what is be­ing prac­ticed cur­rent­ly. Vi­sion­ary lead­er­ship, Cum­mings said, was now manda­to­ry at the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty lev­el.

"There must be a pen­e­tra­tion of sci­ence in­to po­lice prac­tice. What we keep see­ing is an in­ef­fi­cient and in­ef­fec­tive use of re­sources, ar­cha­ic prac­tices and a du­pli­ca­tion of ef­forts. What we need in a plan to de­crease crime are strate­gies that tar­get high im­pact of­fend­ers and cor­rupt or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­crease in­car­cer­a­tion, low­er crimes against women and chil­dren, re­duce re­cidi­vism and en­hance re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion."

The coun­try, Cum­mings said, has failed to re­alise that law en­force­ment it­self can­not re­duce vi­o­lence. "There is an ob­vi­ous lack of di­verse in­tel­li­gences at the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty lev­el." A cross-wiring of law en­force­ment, courts, cor­rec­tions, treat­ment agen­cies, jus­tice in­for­ma­tion shar­ing and com­mu­ni­ty based part­ners, Cum­mings said, are re­quired.

"We are not see­ing the req­ui­site cross-sys­tem col­lab­o­ra­tion." Cum­mings said as a na­tion we must un­der­stand that trust, trans­paren­cy and the pro­tec­tion of pri­va­cy, civ­il rights and civ­il lib­er­ties are fun­da­men­tal to ef­fec­tive crime con­trol and to achiev­ing safe com­mu­ni­ties. Cum­mings said a strate­gic ap­proach that en­com­pass­es pre­vent­ing, con­trol­ling crime, col­lab­o­ra­tions in ad­min­is­ter­ing jus­tice and as­sist­ing vic­tims was key.


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