Small and Mi­cro En­ter­pris­es (SMEs) are most like­ly to be af­fect­ed by crime, and this fact has con­tributed even more to the crime scourge than most re­alise.

This was one of the ob­ser­va­tions made dur­ing the pri­vate sec­tor per­spec­tive seg­ment on Tues­day dur­ing the Re­gion­al Sym­po­sium: Vi­o­lence as A Pub­lic Health Is­sue—The Crime Chal­lenge at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain.

Di­rec­tor of the Cari­com Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CP­SO), An­drew Sab­ga, ex­plained that SMEs con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the re­gion­al GDP and, as such, crime’s im­pact on SMEs had a rip­ple ef­fect.

“Ac­cord­ing to the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank, SMEs ac­count for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 per cent of our GDP and 45 per cent of the jobs in the re­gion. The re­gion­al pri­vate sec­tor is the sec­ond and in many mem­ber states, the most sig­nif­i­cant em­ploy­er and al­so oc­cu­pies a com­plex and high­ly in­te­grat­ed so­cial and eco­nom­ic po­si­tion­ing among Cari­com com­mu­ni­ties,” said Sab­ga, adding that these hin­drances could im­pact re­gion­al tar­gets such as the 25 by 25 ini­tia­tive aimed at re­duc­ing the re­gion’s food im­port bill.

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Charles Pash­ley al­so shared the con­cern that SMEs were most im­pact­ed, as he re­vealed that al­most half of the Cham­ber’s mem­ber­ship had been im­pact­ed by crime.

“As An­drew in­di­cat­ed 50 per cent of our busi­ness­es in your re­gion are SMEs. And your re­al­i­ty is the small­er busi­ness­es are the ones that are most im­pact­ed by crime and it goes be­yond mon­e­tary im­pacts. It’s al­so a mat­ter of sus­tain­abil­i­ty as well, whether they can re­main in busi­ness,” he said, “There­fore it neg­a­tive­ly im­pacts busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ty and there­fore, the eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties of the coun­try. This fur­ther im­pacts the so­cial is­sues that are caus­ing crime. So, in essence, un­less we ar­rest crime, then the is­sues that are the un­der­ly­ing cause of crime, which is so­cial in­equities con­tin­ue to get worse.”

Based on pub­lic sta­tis­tics, Sab­ga not­ed that crime is more preva­lent in in­ner-city com­mu­ni­ties. He sug­gest­ed that greater in­vest­ment in these com­mu­ni­ties could spark a turn­around in these ar­eas.

“The ev­i­dence sug­gests that where there are high den­si­ties of peo­ple liv­ing in a com­mu­ni­ty, with­out the req­ui­site sup­port­ive in­fra­struc­ture, crime and vi­o­lence were high­er. In­vest­ment in in­fra­struc­ture in these chal­lenged com­mu­ni­ties could have a pos­i­tive im­pact on vi­o­lent crime rates. Such in­vest­ments would need to be un­der­tak­en from a stand­point of ur­ban plan­ning and reengi­neer­ing which would in­clude recre­ation spaces, de­mo­li­tion of di­lap­i­dat­ed build­ings, the con­struc­tion of so­cial sup­port in­fra­struc­ture, and in­sti­tu­tions,” said Sab­ga, who ex­plained that these projects could in­ject these com­mu­ni­ties with a greater sense of worth and in turn serve as a built-in de­ter­rent to crime in those ar­eas.

“Our col­lec­tive chal­lenge will be to help com­mu­ni­ties to re­store their dig­ni­ty through re­spect, through re­al op­por­tu­ni­ties to im­prove them­selves and their for­tunes in life. Pride in their en­vi­ron­ment will be a crit­i­cal and cru­cial el­e­ment in ad­dress­ing the crime chal­lenge. The restora­tion of hu­man dig­ni­ty can on­ly come from tru­ly hu­man lead­er­ship and care,” said Sab­ga.

Pash­ley ex­plained that eco­nom­ic is­sues and pover­ty were, sta­tis­ti­cal­ly, not the sole dri­ver of crime and agreed that prop­er in­vest­ment in chal­lenged ar­eas could dri­ve a turn­around.

“I per­son­al­ly don’t be­lieve that a poor per­son is a crim­i­nal. I think that the­sis is not ex­act­ly cor­rect. I do think there are so­cio-eco­nom­ic is­sues that do cause crime. But this slide would de­pict their ranges of GDPs and al­so crime rates through­out the Caribbean. And when you look for in­stance, at a coun­try, like Be­lize and Ja­maica, both of them have the same sort of GDP. But yet the homi­cide rate in Ja­maica is sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er per capi­ta than the homi­cide rate is in Be­lize,” said Pash­ley.

“We have to look at causal ef­fects and on a glob­al ba­sis. I don’t be­lieve that in­come alone is one of the dri­ving forces un­der­ly­ing when you get in­to the mi­cro side of it. In­come is im­por­tant in terms of how we in­vest in our coun­try and in our peo­ple.”