An In­tro­duc­tion to Pro­fes­sor Ramesh De­osaran’s book, Crime, Jus­tice and Pol­i­tics in a Mul­ti-Racial So­ci­ety, by at­tor­ney Is­rael Ra­jah-Khan, SC. (Pub­lished by Ian Ran­dle Pub­lish­ers, Mi­a­mi)

As a prac­ti­tion­er in crim­i­nal jus­tice for over 40 years, I find these es­says in the book, Crime, Pol­i­tics and Jus­tice in a Mul­ti-Racial So­ci­ety, by Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus Ramesh De­osaran not on­ly fas­ci­nat­ing to read but a grim re­minder of how crime and in­jus­tice have been erod­ing civ­il so­ci­ety over the years and how se­ri­ous the chal­lenges re­main. His es­says tell us not on­ly how our pub­lic safe­ty in­sti­tu­tions have failed but al­so how to fix them.

He be­gan list­ing these es­says from 2010 with the trou­bling is­sue of law­less­ness and how in­fec­tious this civic dis­ease has grown over the years in­to feed­ing more and more se­ri­ous crimes. Iron­i­cal­ly and sad­ly, he end­ed these es­says by again paint­ing a trou­bling por­trait of law­less­ness and its dele­te­ri­ous ef­fects in 2020.

Things, he wrote, have got­ten worse. From squat­ting, pol­lu­tion, chaot­ic vend­ing, PH taxis, ju­di­cial in­ef­fi­cien­cy to di­min­ished trust in the po­lice, cor­rup­tion, ed­u­ca­tion­al deficits, health ser­vices.

True, he sounds the alarm but he has al­so pro­vid­ed ideas and poli­cies, many of them re­search-based, to im­prove things. On­ly those who have ears to hear will lis­ten. He gra­cious­ly not­ed the use­ful con­tri­bu­tions of oth­er pro­fes­sion­als, for ex­am­ple, the 1992 Den­nis Gur­ley Com­mit­tee Re­port to help re­duce tri­al de­lays, and the 1994 El­lis Clarke Com­mis­sion to im­prove the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice in which Pro­fes­sor De­osaran him­self was al­so a mem­ber.

In dis­cussing the “cul­ture of law­less­ness,” he takes a broad, crim­ino­genic view of the phe­nom­e­non. He says: “Let me say that vend­ing, dif­fer­ent from squat­ting, is a form of in­for­mal en­ter­prise. If you look around the coun­try, you will see ‘the lit­tle peo­ple’ all over­selling this, that and the oth­er. In oth­er words, mi­cro-en­tre­pre­neur­ship and self-help en­ter­pris­es are bub­bling all around us. There­fore, the au­thor­i­ties should con­struct ap­pro­pri­ate fa­cil­i­ties and traf­fic signs to en­cour­age vend­ing in a san­i­tary, or­der­ly, law­ful and even in a more prof­itable way. Law­less­ness seizes un­at­tend­ed space. It starts in drops, a lit­tle here and a lit­tle there, but soon build­ing in­to a wide­spread habit be­cause it brings vis­i­ble ben­e­fits.”

These es­says con­tain re­peat­ed pro­pos­als to im­prove the po­lice ser­vice, the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, Par­lia­ment, the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, the pris­ons, road safe­ty, even tri­al by ju­ry. Pro­fes­sor De­osaran con­tin­ues the analy­sis from 2010 in­to 2020 with­out ap­pear­ing hope­less but main­tain­ing op­ti­mism and civic vig­i­lance to help keep our ba­sic free­doms and democ­ra­cy alive. Some of his es­says bold­ly chal­lenge the weak­ness­es of the po­lit­i­cal par­ty sys­tem by its con­tin­ued prac­tice of em­bed­ded favouritism over mer­it, the in­equitable dis­tri­b­u­tion of state re­sources, etc. The ten­sion be­tween po­lit­i­cal par­ties seems in­evitable, he ar­gues, since po­lit­i­cal par­ties sur­vive on pa­tron­age and di­vi­sion.

These con­cerns are re­vealed in his es­says on democ­ra­cy, the 1990 Mus­limeen in­sur­rec­tion and the rights of a free press. As I read his es­says on gangs, school delin­quen­cy, par­ent­ing, state cor­rup­tion, the cul­ture of law­less­ness, white-col­lar and blue-col­lar crime and even on gos­sip and ru­mour, I re­main very im­pressed by his in­tel­lec­tu­al ver­sa­til­i­ty in draw­ing re­search and in­sights from so­cial psy­chol­o­gy, so­ci­ol­o­gy, pol­i­tics and crim­i­nol­o­gy to pro­duce so elo­quent­ly these es­says. He tells us how gangs are for the or­di­nary read­er. He ex­plains how gangs are formed, the risk fac­tors and how to pre­vent their for­ma­tion. He ex­plains, some­times hu­mor­ous­ly, the rise of elec­tron­ic guer­ril­las. Sev­er­al es­says on tri­al by ju­ry chal­lenge those who ad­vo­cate or its com­plete abo­li­tion. He ac­cepts some re­form but in­sists that the main ob­jec­tives of the ju­ry be main­tained by im­proved treat­ment of ju­ries.

As a mem­ber of sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al pro­fes­sion­al bod­ies and a reg­u­lar speak­er at pub­lic safe­ty con­fer­ences, in­clud­ing his ac­tive role in the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice, he has well-de­vel­oped skills in trans­form­ing his aca­d­e­m­ic re­search in­to pub­lic pol­i­cy and train­ing pro­grammes. In par­tic­u­lar, his es­says in­di­cate that he has ex­pert knowl­edge of com­mu­ni­ty pol­i­cy and its sup­ple­men­tary role to law en­force­ment.

As an as­so­ciate mem­ber of the In­ter­na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Chiefs of Po­lice, Pro­fes­sor De­osaran has ex­celled as a cher­ished pub­lic in­tel­lec­tu­al. These es­says, so at­trac­tive­ly and in­de­pen­dent­ly writ­ten, help re­move a lot of the self-serv­ing pos­tures and in­ter­ests that of­ten mis­guide pub­lic opin­ion. He has po­lite­ly re­moved many masks with his in­tel­lec­tu­al hon­esty and pas­sion for the un­der­dog.

The coun­try should be proud and grate­ful for the con­tri­bu­tions of this tire­less and bril­liant pro­fes­sor. These es­says could be prof­itably used by tourists, re­searchers, teach­ers, stu­dents, mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices, pol­i­cy-mak­ers, politi­cians and com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivists.