Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an

Just over a year ago the Prime Min­is­ter told us our "na­tion must not be held to ran­som by ma­raud­ing­groups of thugs bent on cre­at­ing hav­oc in our so­ci­ety. We will hunt them down, search them out, and we will bring them to jus­tice." More re­cent­ly, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty promised to hire be­tween 5,000 and 10,000 new Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice of­fi­cers to sup­port our reg­u­lar po­lice of­fi­cers in this task.

He al­so in­vit­ed cit­i­zens to ap­ply to the De­fence Force. Tak­en to­geth­er it seems street gangs and vi­o­lent of­fences are the most se­ri­ous crim­i­nal threat to our na­tion and on­ly an army-size force can pro­tect us. On the sur­face that seems hard to de­ny.

If we use the sta­tis­tics of ar­rests from the state of emer­gency to pro­duce an im­age of who are the biggest threats to cit­i­zens' safe­ty, we see most­ly young Afro-Trinida­di­an males from ar­eas such as Laven­tille, John John and Beetham. Just as it was in colo­nial times, there is an im­age of crime as chiefly the work of poor, op­por­tunis­tic Afro-Trinida­di­an males-and rarely the work of oth­er groups in so­ci­ety; say like those more eco­nom­i­cal, cul­tur­al­ly and so­cial­ly well-off.

An­thro­pol­o­gists study cul­ture and the way a per­son's so­cio-cul­tur­al and eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment shapes their be­hav­iour and ideas. Cul­ture isn't the on­ly fac­tor in un­der­stand­ing a per­son's be­hav­iour; but it is cer­tain­ly a fac­tor. We don't just study down at the cul­ture of the low­er class­es, we al­so study up at the be­hav­iour of the rich and pow­er­ful too. This pro­vides a more holis­tic pic­ture of a so­ci­ety.

What we've found is that crim­i­nals from the up­per class­es of­ten emerge from a sim­i­lar so­cio-eco­nom­ic class, sta­tus back­ground, neigh­bour­hood, school and mem­ber­ship clubs, which all cre­ate ties of com­rade­ship, both so­cial and busi­ness, and that the skills and val­ues of old­er white-col­lar crim­i­nals are of­ten passed down to younger up­com­ing mem­bers. As such, white-col­lar crime can be de­scribed as a com­mu­ni­ty with its own modes of be­hav­iour, cul­ture, rit­u­als, net­works and self-per­pet­u­a­tion; just as we are told street gangs are.

An­oth­er use­ful way to think of white-col­lar crime is to use the an­thro­po­log­i­cal idea of "class-pow­er." Class-pow­er means the prof­its a so­ci­ety gen­er­ates have been and con­tin­ue to be ap­pro­pri­at­ed and cen­tralised for the ben­e­fit of groups who al­ready have ac­cess to po­lit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and so­cial pow­er.

Through­out hu­man his­to­ry it is a ma­jor rea­son why in­equal­i­ty ex­tends in so­ci­eties rather than de­clines. And cross-cul­tur­al­ly grow­ing in­equal­i­ty is the rea­son ar­chae­ol­o­gists give for the col­lapse of var­i­ous cities like Myce­nae, Harap­pa and Teoti­hua­can, of the Greek, In­dus and Maya civil­i­sa­tions re­spec­tive­ly.

Crime by high-sta­tus groups in all so­ci­eties and cul­tures then is not new; it is a re­al­i­ty that has plagued the world for mil­len­nia. So why is white-col­lar crime to­day much less vis­i­ble than the crimes our gov­ern­ment spends far more time and re­sources on?

Well one rea­son is the cul­ture of the peo­ple and in­sti­tu­tions who re­port and in­ves­ti­gate white-col­lar crime in the first place-in par­tic­u­lar the me­dia, the gov­ern­ment, the le­gal pro­fes­sion and aca­d­e­mics them­selves-all groups in so­ci­ety we might con­sid­er pow­er­ful and most­ly com­posed of high-sta­tus group mem­bers. This cre­ates a cul­tur­al blind spot and class-based nar­ra­tives of us ver­sus them: "We aren't the prob­lem, those oth­er peo­ple are the prob­lem."

White-col­lar crime is al­so of­ten less vis­i­ble be­cause it oc­curs away from pub­lic eyes, and is of­ten com­pli­cat­ed, as op­posed to hap­pen­ing on the streets where it can be re­port­ed in sen­sa­tion­al sound bites that fit nice­ly in­to the evening news round-up.

The sug­ges­tion here is that white-col­lar crime is a great threat to so­ci­ety, and caus­es more harm to so­ci­ety over­all, than street crime. So when mas­sive amounts of gov­ern­ment mon­ey go miss­ing, or groups col­lude in cor­rupt deals, or huge fi­nan­cial de­posits are ex­empt­ed from de­c­la­ra­tion, these eco­nom­ic crimes do greater over­all long-term dam­age to our na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, se­cu­ri­ty, in­tegri­ty and pros­per­i­ty than ma­raud­ing streets gangs.

Crime in T&T then is like a dis­tort­ed mir­ror where the crimes com­mit­ted by the poor are seen as large and the crimes com­mit­ted by the rich are made small.

• Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an is an an­thro­pol­o­gist at UWI, St Au­gus­tine