The new plan to weed out crim­i­nal el­e­ments in To­ba­go has been de­scribed as “re­ac­tive” by econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James while pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Cur­tis Williams says busi­ness­es are still very much con­cerned about the crime scourge on the is­land.

James ad­vised that crime pre­ven­tion re­quires stern­er stuff – firmer sci­en­tif­ic and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al foun­da­tions.

He told the Busi­ness Guardian when PM Dr Kei­th Row­ley, the COP and the top brass of the To­ba­go po­lice core is­sued their “dra­mat­ic re­ac­tions” about two weeks ago to the grow­ing scourge of crime, es­pe­cial­ly mur­ders, in To­ba­go, they as­sert­ed they had a plan to bring the prob­lem un­der con­trol. He said the essence of the plan was a cor­re­spond­ing surge in po­lice pres­ence, com­ple­ment­ed by an in­creased pres­ence of po­lice com­ing in from Trinidad.

The To­ba­go-based econ­o­mist added the “pub­lic would take note that all the of­fi­cials hinged the suc­cess of the plan on the will­ing­ness of To­bag­o­ni­ans to as­sist the po­lice in its de­tec­tive work.”

“The gen­er­al prin­ci­ple in­voked was ‘see some­thing or know some­thing, reach out to the po­lice.’ The PM seized the high ground of hav­ing ‘To­bag­on­ian iden­ti­ty’ and was es­pe­cial­ly strong in his ad­mo­ni­tion of To­bag­o­ni­ans to be as co­op­er­a­tive with the po­lice as is need­ed to keep crime un­der con­trol. He might well have added that keep­ing To­ba­go the safest part of the na­tion is vi­tal to the de­vel­op­ment of its econ­o­my as well as that of the na­tion.

“Well, all of this might make sense. How­ev­er, be­ing the ul­ti­mate guardians of the cave’s door, the pub­lic would be quite jus­ti­fied to hear it all keep­ing one eye open and one eye closed. The whole ap­proach ap­pears to be too sim­plis­tic and re­ac­tive,” James said.

Not­ing that the coun­try ac­tu­al­ly has a long ex­pe­ri­ence with many po­lice of­fi­cers mov­ing from one sis­ter isle to the oth­er, James al­so said from the ev­i­dence thus far, mass move­ment has made lit­tle dif­fer­ence to crime pre­ven­tion and crime con­trol in To­ba­go.

“There might be much hope but ac­tu­al­ly no good sci­en­tif­ic rea­son to ex­pect the re­verse flow to make much dif­fer­ence to what is hap­pen­ing in To­ba­go. Some­thing else, some­thing more en­dem­ic, must be wrong be­sides too lit­tle so­ci­o­log­i­cal mix­ing,” James said, sug­gest­ing that there­fore, more sci­en­tif­ic think­ing is need­ed, guid­ed by well-de­signed stud­ies along the lines of de­tailed liv­ing stan­dards sur­veys.

Sec­ond­ly, he ex­plained, “The peo­ple know that if it is to ad­dress these so­ci­o­log­i­cal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­rup­tive crime shocks, like the quadru­ple mur­der, crime pre­ven­tion must be treat­ed as far bet­ter than crime cure, even from a de­ter­rence view­point. This is the heart of the rea­son in­for­ma­tion flow is so vi­tal. In­for­ma­tion must be shared and com­mu­ni­cat­ed ef­fec­tive­ly be­tween the po­lice and the cit­i­zen to re­spond swift­ly to crime and de­liv­er just but ef­fec­tive pun­ish­ment and de­ter­rence.”

How­ev­er, James said in­for­ma­tion flow be­tween cit­i­zen and po­lice is small, stat­ing that in­for­ma­tion must al­so flow ef­fec­tive­ly be­tween cit­i­zens and all those or­gans of the so­ci­ety that are re­spon­si­ble for mar­shalling de­vel­op­ment, in­deed in­clud­ing spot­ting and re­spond­ing to un­ac­cept­able caus­es and risks of de­viance and fail­ure at all stages of life, from child­hood through ado­les­cence to adult­hood.

“In fact, this is the re­al rea­son crime pre­ven­tion and crime so­lu­tions are not sim­ply polic­ing mat­ters, and the rea­son the pro­nounce­ments of the po­lice brass and the PM are much too sim­plis­tic to work in the end,” James added.

He said the prob­lem of lim­it­ed in­for­ma­tion on pol­i­cy­mak­ing is the “some­thing else” that must be ad­dressed, re­quir­ing more than fren­zied re­ac­tions from Gov­ern­ment and po­lice to do so suc­cess­ful­ly.

“The re­al­i­ty is that it is not on­ly the polic­ing arm of the ex­ec­u­tive that is starved of need­ed in­for­ma­tion. Every oth­er arm of Gov­ern­ment is too – ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing, fi­nance and econ­o­my, com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment – name it and you find with­out much dig­ging that it lacks an ad­e­quate flow of in­for­ma­tion from cit­i­zens. In fact, the en­tire de­sign of our sys­tem of ex­ec­u­tive Gov­ern­ment en­sures this. By that au­thor­i­tar­i­an de­sign, Cab­i­net and all the arms of Gov­ern­ment it man­ages, in­clud­ing the po­lice, run the coun­try. By that de­sign, gov­ern­ment re­lies on a large­ly emas­cu­lat­ed pub­lic ser­vice to sup­ply the in­for­ma­tion it needs to make pol­i­cy and strat­e­gy,” James said.

He added that most of the in­for­ma­tion that Gov­ern­ment needs is in the hands of cit­i­zens, but the Cab­i­net has no arrange­ments to get it, ex­cept through “favouritism and back door de­vices.”

The re­sult, James said, is that it makes and im­ple­ments pol­i­cy with on­ly a small sub­set of the in­for­ma­tion need­ed to get things right and be ef­fec­tive.

“So, most of the time it gets de­ci­sions wrong. This is glar­ing­ly true about crime man­age­ment, and the po­lice know it all too well. Even good de­tec­tives tend to fail in that con­text. The grow­ing na­tion­al scourge of crime speaks loud­ly. How­ev­er, the prob­lem of poor in­for­ma­tion flow char­ac­ter­izes the whole “colo­nial” ap­proach to so­cial, eco­nom­ic, and po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion we have adopt­ed since In­de­pen­dence. It has not worked in the past and it will not work any time soon.

“It would seem that, giv­en their ac­quired taste for au­thor­i­tar­i­an rule, our politi­cians, mind­ed to be mod­ern ‘mas­sas’, would rather ig­nore this deeply can­cer­ous lim­it­ed in­for­ma­tion sit­u­a­tion in both is­lands and hope that fren­zied de­c­la­ra­tions of in­tent will con­vince the pub­lic. They fail to no­tice that be­tween mas­ters and slaves on­ly lim­it­ed in­for­ma­tion flow is pos­si­ble,” James said.

He not­ed that the so­ci­ety pays the price in en­trenched un­der­de­vel­op­ment, in­clud­ing wide­spread un­der­em­ploy­ment and so­cial dis­af­fec­tion, adding that grow­ing crime is just the tip of that so­cial ice­berg.

The way for­ward, James rec­om­mend­ed is to “put the colo­nial past be­hind once and for all” and re­or­gan­ise our­selves for full in­for­ma­tion shar­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion at all lev­els, be­tween po­lice and cit­i­zen, be­tween com­mu­ni­ty and is­land, be­tween is­land and coun­try.

“For this, the whole sys­tem of Gov­ern­ment has to be re­designed as a joint de­ci­sion-mak­ing sys­tem, bring­ing an end to the kind of ex­ec­u­tive gov­ern­ment that is en­trenched in the na­tion­al Gov­ern­ment, in the THA and in our lo­cal Gov­ern­ment bod­ies in Trinidad. Every lev­el of Gov­ern­ment must be re­or­gan­ised to prac­tice full in­for­ma­tion shar­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion through leg­isla­tive hear­ings that can com­pel ex­ec­u­tive tes­ti­mo­ny and fa­cil­i­tate pub­lic pe­ti­tion­ing on all mat­ters of Gov­ern­ment re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, in­clud­ing the bud­gets,” James added.

In that re­or­gan­i­sa­tion, he said there must al­so be a cen­tral role for the com­mu­ni­ty, the nat­ur­al so­ci­o­log­i­cal unit in which the cit­i­zen can hone the prac­tice of full in­for­ma­tion shar­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

“That is the sub­stan­tive sense in which the PM’s ear­li­er call for con­sti­tu­tion re­form is a good move, even though he went about things the wrong way.

“We would all do well to re­mem­ber that it is in the com­mu­ni­ties that we suc­ceed­ed in build­ing our lo­cal civil­i­sa­tion af­ter slav­ery and strict in­den­ture – our lan­guage, our foods, our mu­sic and mu­si­cal in­stru­ments, our hous­ing, and all else. And when the com­mu­ni­ties are em­pow­ered ap­pro­pri­ate­ly to func­tion as Gov­ern­ment in their own right, ex­ec­u­tive ex­hor­ta­tions to share and com­mu­ni­cate in­for­ma­tion will ac­count to preach­ing to the choir,” James added.