JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, July 5, 2025

Crime-fighting is not a numbers game

by

7 days ago
20250628

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) made a cam­paign promise to slash crime by 50 per cent with­in five years. That means cut­ting the mur­der rate from rough­ly 600 year­ly to around 300 by the next gen­er­al elec­tion in 2030.

It is an am­bi­tious nu­mer­i­cal goal that the par­ty based on a strat­e­gy of leg­isla­tive re­form, polic­ing mod­erni­sa­tion, ju­di­cial over­haul, vic­tim sup­port and com­mu­ni­ty root­ed pre­ven­tion.

Crit­ics might con­sid­er that to be an un­re­al­is­tic goal giv­en past per­for­mance and re­source con­straints. Some might ar­gue that achiev­ing such tar­gets re­quires decades of sus­tained in­vest­ment to re­alise in­cre­men­tal gains.

How­ev­er, this is a na­tion that has been strug­gling to over­come its crime cri­sis for the bet­ter part of two decades. With the mur­der count rapid­ly climb­ing to­wards 200, there is a great deal of in­ter­est in how the new UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion, now two months in­to its tenure, will trans­late its man­i­festo promis­es in­to mea­sur­able re­sults.

Based on its elec­tion pledges, the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion is pur­su­ing a hy­brid mod­el of hard en­force­ment that in­cludes tech-en­abled polic­ing and tougher laws, com­bined with the soft pre­ven­tion ap­proach of en­hanced vic­tim sup­port and a range of so­cial pro­grammes in high-crime com­mu­ni­ties.

These ini­tia­tives will de­pend heav­i­ly on sus­tained fund­ing and cross-agency co­or­di­na­tion. They are mod­elled on in­ter­ven­tions that have been suc­cess­ful in oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions but will re­quire leg­isla­tive change and pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships to suc­ceed here.

Among the nu­mer­i­cal goals set by the Gov­ern­ment is the de­liv­ery of swift, trans­par­ent jus­tice with in­dictable cas­es heard and re­solved end-to-end in two to three years and slash­ing the huge court back­log.

In ad­di­tion, pro­fes­sion­al up­grades in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) are be­ing tout­ed as ways to pro­duce sharp im­prove­ments in abysmal crime de­tec­tion rates, cur­rent­ly un­der ten per cent, as well as con­vic­tion rates of less than five per cent that are well be­low re­gion­al bench­marks.

The best known and most fierce­ly de­bat­ed as­pect of the Gov­ern­ment’s an­ti-crime plan is the in­tro­duc­tion of stand-your-ground laws to give cit­i­zens ex­pand­ed firearms rights.

But there is much more to the UNC’s crime-fight­ing plans, in­clud­ing the con­struc­tion of a na­tion­al foren­sic sci­ence com­plex, digi­tis­ing every po­lice sta­tion and erect­ing new courts.

Many of these pro­pos­als are cap­i­tal-in­ten­sive, re­quir­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions in ex­pen­di­ture, and there are ques­tions about the TTPS’ abil­i­ty to re­cruit and re­tain enough trained of­fi­cers to staff new units, par­tic­u­lar­ly if salaries and work­ing con­di­tions aren’t im­proved.

The UNC’s pro­pos­als are heavy on tough, tech-dri­ven law en­force­ment and make on­ly pass­ing ref­er­ences to pover­ty, job­less­ness and home­less­ness, im­por­tant el­e­ments in crime pre­ven­tion which will re­quire siz­able in­vest­ments in hous­ing, men­tal health­care and youth em­ploy­ment.

Thorny prob­lems like gang re­cruit­ment and do­mes­tic vi­o­lence will al­so re­quire pri­or­i­ty fo­cus en­tail­ing sig­nif­i­cant lev­els of man­pow­er and fund­ing.

Five years is not a lot of time to turn around high lev­els of vi­o­lent crime in a coun­try with a mur­der rate that is among the high­est in the Caribbean and the world on a per capi­ta ba­sis.

Im­pres­sive-sound­ing man­i­festo promis­es might pro­duce some short-term suc­cess, but gains can on­ly be sus­tained if crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tives are ac­com­pa­nied by mea­sures to build up so­cial in­fra­struc­ture, pre­serve civ­il lib­er­ties and se­cure sus­tain­able fi­nanc­ing.

Crime-fight­ing is not a num­bers game. For re­al re­sults, en­force­ment needs to be bal­anced with com­mu­ni­ty-led, pub­lic-health in­ter­ven­tions and deep in­sti­tu­tion­al re­form.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored