With respect to the upsurge of murders and other crimes throughout T&T, criminologist Dr Wendell Wallace said that there is need for preventative measures rather than managing as crime “seems to be a runaway train.”
Wallace, who was speaking on CNC3’s The Morning Brew, said in the last three weeks he has observed an increase in crime throughout T&T and added that there exists a fear factor.
“We need to manage crime but prevent first. Too often our strategies are aimed at interventions and then trying to suppress,” he added.
Wallace said focus is made on legislation agenda without thinking about a social agenda.
“Indeed crime is a social issue, it is a social harm that is committed on society so we need to put more social programmes in place to prevent crime and even at risk youth we need to put more effort into prevention,” he added
He also said, “The data shows there are more afro-Trinidadians who are caught in that web of criminality but that depends on the type of crime because when you look at white collar crime it shows different individuals and some people argue that the police only target the afro-Trinidadian males between 16 to 29 but the fact is that quite a lot of young men are being caught in that trap.
Wallace said he has always been an advocate for a national youth programme, “whereby youths 16 to 29, that catchment area that the data shows that they are more prone to crime. Let us put a national youth programme in place so that these young, possible unemployed men, can be placed in a programme aimed at building discipline, life skills among other things.” (RDR)
Another criminologist, Darius Figuera said since the landmark of June 30 2020’s truce among gangs what have been happening in 2020 with an escalation in 2021 “is happening outside of the core of gangland in T&T where persons who are not within the new order are engaged in killing each other.”
He said, “The order was existing before it was made public on June 30 in living colour. The years 2017, 2018 and 2019 were the years of rivers of blood in Trinidad’s history and by 2020 the brakes would have already been applied by June 30 2020 thereafter everything just went into deep sleep in the core of gangland so from 2021 we started to see now an acceleration of the killings outside of core gangland among persons who are not clear on and included in the new order.” (RDR)
