An overhaul of the T&T Police Service, a governmental approach to seriously looking at decriminalising marijuana and the reform of measures to deal with domestic violence victims.
These are the three areas criminologist Renée Cummings says must be addressed in order to properly deal with the crime, in particular homicides and the detection rate in Trinidad and Tobago.
She said is also clear that there is no national homicide reduction strategy.
“The response must be evidence-based, which requires accurate analysis of the problem and identification of the appropriate actions to alleviate it,” Cummings told the T&T Guardian yesterday as the murder toll reached the 500 mark.
Cummings said homicide reduction is beyond the parameters of policing and only national effort that is multi-levelled, multi-disciplinary and multi-agency would be adequate enough.
“That includes government, law enforcement, media, community crime prevention, violence reduction through public education and a criminal justice system that is capable of delivering real-time justice; reducing the high levels of violent retribution in Trinidad and Tobago,” Cummings said.
“Innovative thinking has been the only approach which has worked, internationally, to reduce homicide. It begins with the right mix of diverse intelligences tackling the problem, cutting-edge analysis, an in-depth understanding of the complex dynamics of violence, the proclivities to perpetrate violence and the interdisciplinary determinants that may have spawned and cultivated an aberrant or criminal lifestyle.”
Regarding the crime detection rate, Cummings strongly believes a victim-centered approach to the homicide investigation could help increase the “abysmal” rate. She said homicide investigations need a potent injection of analytic and forensic resources and a new style of communication between law enforcement and communities.
“Law enforcement also needs to re-examine its use-of-force in communities and invest more time, effort and resources in building a strong foundation of trust with communities, so that citizens will feel compelled to share information that will bring perpetrators to justice,” Cummings said.
Also commenting on the issue, criminologist Daurius Figueira noted that the question of policing continues to be raised. He said there is a severe limitation to how you prevent a domestic squabble from escalating into violence which is now outside of policing and has to be adjusted by the Government.
“This is where we need to look at reforming measures by which victims can get protection to prevent attacks that end in murder,” he said.
“What we saw in 2018 that has raised the murder rate is the spiralling in domestic violence situations, where people who know each other’s family or have domestic relations with, this contributed in the rise of murders and detection rate because it is very easy to solve those murders.”
Figueira agreed that there is a dire need to overhaul the police service in order to point it in a new direction to be able to engage in better crime reduction. He said the service needs to develop the skills of officers so they can dismantle gangs and added that that in itself calls for a whole reformed and revisioned police service to “get down to task of overhauling or else we will continue to lag behind the violence.”
He said that within the “gangland,” the continuing largest single contribution to the wars is the ganja wars, “because demand way outstretch supply…so we look forward to see how Government reacts to the proposals to decriminalise small amounts of marijuana.”