Who’s next?

It is the ques­tion now of­ten asked by cit­i­zens when a mur­der oc­curs. How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to the di­rec­tor of the Ac­tu­ar­i­al Sci­ences pro­gramme at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus, Stoke­ley Smart, the like­li­hood of be­ing killed may ac­tu­al­ly be much less.  

“In terms of the like­li­hood of be­ing mur­dered, I did some da­ta an­a­lyt­ics here and ran some num­bers based on trends over the years. In 2023, there were 575 mur­ders, Di­vide that by the pop­u­la­tion, 1.4 mil­lion and the prob­a­bil­i­ty of some­one be­ing mur­dered is 0.0004.” 

Ac­tu­ar­ies analyse the fi­nan­cial costs of risk and un­cer­tain­ty. They use math­e­mat­ics, sta­tis­tics, and fi­nan­cial the­o­ry to as­sess the risk of po­ten­tial events, and they help busi­ness­es and clients de­vel­op poli­cies that min­imise the cost of that risk. With over 330 killings in 200 days, there is a lin­ger­ing fear that one of us could be the next vic­tim of a range of vi­o­lent crimes. Safe­ty con­cerns have es­ca­lat­ed over the spate of mur­ders, which saw three men gunned down out­side the Piz­za Boys out­let in Cunu­pia on Sun­day af­ter­noon and Rio Claro busi­ness­woman Caris­sa Ram­rat­tan be­ing shot dead short­ly af­ter drop­ping off her ve­hi­cle to be ser­viced at Toy­ota Trinidad, South Park, San Fer­nan­do, on Sat­ur­day. 

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Smart as­cer­tained that fur­ther analy­sis of the da­ta sug­gests that an­nu­al­ly, deaths by mur­der con­sti­tute a small frac­tion of the coun­try’s to­tal cause of death. 

“Four per cent of deaths in a giv­en year. If you die, there is a four per cent chance that your cause of death will be mur­der.”

Ac­cord­ing to Smart, car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, di­a­betes and can­cer rank con­sid­er­ably high­er in the lead­ing caus­es of death in the coun­try when com­pared to mur­der. “There is a much greater prob­a­bil­i­ty that your cause of death will be from smok­ing or di­a­betes or car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease. You have 1,300 peo­ple a year dy­ing from smok­ing, 2,300 peo­ple a year dy­ing from di­a­betes. The 500 makes head­lines, but if every week we in­di­cat­ed how many peo­ple died from di­a­betes or can­cer then it will be alarm­ing.”

De­spite this, how­ev­er, the Gov­ern­ment and law en­force­ment con­tin­ue to work to­wards im­prov­ing safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty, as the rate of mur­ders places the coun­try sev­enth in the world ac­cord­ing to the World Health rank­ings. But while the chances of be­ing killed seem low, it is some­thing Smart says should not be dis­missed.

“I’m not say­ing that we should not do bet­ter as a so­ci­ety to re­duce the num­ber of peo­ple that are dy­ing from vi­o­lence and mur­ders and what­not, not at all. But when you look at the big­ger pic­ture, we should be more con­cerned or equal­ly con­cerned with the num­ber of peo­ple dy­ing from these health­care is­sues.” 

Re­search has sug­gest­ed that there are sev­er­al oth­er fac­tors con­tribut­ing to mur­der, in­clud­ing ge­o­graph­ic lo­ca­tion, in­equal­i­ty and ac­cess to firearms. Psy­chi­a­trist Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh stat­ed that even if the prob­a­bil­i­ty of some­one be­ing mur­dered may ap­pear low, the per­cep­tion that crime can af­fect any­one at any time con­tin­ues to take a toll on cit­i­zens. 

“You could go out in­to the com­mu­ni­ty for a walk and be­come col­lat­er­al dam­age, you could be buy­ing dou­bles, at One Wood­brook Place or even the hos­pi­tal, and there is nowhere on this small land mass that you could feel safe.” 

Deyals­ingh ex­plained that the psy­che of cit­i­zens con­tin­ued to be strained by vi­o­lent crimes and that re­ports sug­gest that the over­all men­tal health of the pub­lic is be­ing af­fect­ed.