As this coun­try’s mur­der count ap­proach­es 400, crim­i­nol­o­gists fear that if pre­ven­tion strate­gies are not changed to deal with the type of crimes oc­cur­ring, the sta­tis­tics could be the same as 2022 - 600 or more.

On­ly on Wednes­day, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher said the po­lice ser­vice’s crime-fight­ing strate­gies were yield­ing re­sults. She added that mur­ders were trend­ing down.

The mur­der count as of yes­ter­day stood at 392.

But last week, in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia three crim­i­nol­o­gists gave their take on the present crime sit­u­a­tion.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus Ramesh De­osaran said the over­all dan­ger in the es­ca­la­tion of mur­ders and se­ri­ous crimes is that such crim­ino­genic in­ci­dents will grad­u­al­ly be­come “nor­malised’ in the next few years.

He said if noth­ing sys­tem­at­ic and sus­tain­able is done the coun­try will ad­just and learn how to live with it.

“This un­healthy con­di­tion will ad­verse­ly af­fect the so­cial, eco­nom­ic and morale of the en­tire so­ci­ety,” De­osaran said.

He said he ex­pect­ed the mur­der count this year to ex­ceed that of 2022. He al­so feared that the bru­tal­i­ty, vi­o­lent mur­ders and fear­less­ness with which home in­va­sions were be­ing com­mit­ted were tak­ing the coun­try in­to the realm of do­mes­tic ter­ror­ism.

“That is, kill one, fright­en ten thou­sand. The coun­try’s lev­el of fear is now un­prece­dent­ed,” De­osaran ex­plained.

He al­so said con­cern over the mur­der count can­not be dis­cussed with­out ex­am­in­ing the very low, be­low 20 per cent de­tec­tion rate. De­osaran said too many mur­der­ers are on the loose with­out be­ing caught.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly, the es­ca­lat­ing mur­der rate is al­so strain­ing po­lice re­sources while damp­en­ing cit­i­zens’ will­ing­ness to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion to the po­lice,” he said.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dar­ius Figuera shared a sim­i­lar view with Pro­fes­sor De­osaran. He said the ge­og­ra­phy and type of crimes be­ing com­mit­ted have changed.

“There are now clear signs that there must be deep root­ed changes in the method­ol­o­gy of the TTPS to ar­rest the ris­ing mur­der toll,” he said.

The crim­i­nol­o­gist said the most vi­o­lent quar­ters of 2022 were the third and fourth quar­ters and if there are to be few­er mur­ders in 2023, then the cur­rent re­duc­tion seen in Ju­ly and Au­gust needs to con­tin­ue.

“At the end of Au­gust, which is a very short time from now, we will see if the trend es­tab­lished last month con­tin­ues in­to Au­gust and then we can start to dis­cern if we ac­tu­al­ly have a slow­down on our hands,” he said.

As for the per­for­mance of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, Figuera said it will take time to re­duce the cur­rent crime rate.

“It takes time to turn around a bat­tle­ship on wa­ter, it can­not turn in a dime,” he said.

But he ad­mit­ted that he does not feel safe in this coun­try.

“I have to be con­stant­ly alert, and I have to be con­stant­ly look­ing for means to in­crease my se­cu­ri­ty,” he said.

Mean­while, an­oth­er crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Keron King said it is im­por­tant to change the dis­course from a tal­ly­ing num­bers dis­course to an ev­i­dence-based crime re­duc­tion one.

“We need to dis­cuss to what ex­tent has the Com­mis­sion­er’s Pre­ci­sion Polic­ing plan been eval­u­at­ed, to what ex­tent has in­tel­li­gence-led polic­ing been im­ple­ment­ed in our crime pre­ven­tion ap­proach and if so what has been our ex­pe­ri­ences,” King said.

He said the mur­der rate is trou­bling and un­less the ap­proach for crime pre­ven­tion and re­duc­tion comes from an ev­i­dence-based per­spec­tive, he said he was afraid that the pub­lic will con­tin­ue to have this prob­lem.