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Monday, July 7, 2025

Criminologist—Everyone has part to play in fixing crime

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307 days ago
20240903
 Criminologist Dr Randy Seepersad

Criminologist Dr Randy Seepersad

Se­nior Re­porter 

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt 

As the crime rate soars, many cit­i­zens feel in­creas­ing­ly pow­er­less, view­ing the is­sue as sole­ly the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment or po­lice.

How­ev­er, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad be­lieves a uni­fied ef­fort from all sec­tors of so­ci­ety is es­sen­tial to tack­ling the prob­lem.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Seep­er­sad crit­i­cised Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for his re­cent claim that he should not be blamed for the na­tion’s es­ca­lat­ing crime rate.

“I dis­agree with the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ment,” Seep­er­sad said.

“Ad­dress­ing crime is not just the job of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty or law en­force­ment. It is a col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that in­volves all el­e­ments of gov­ern­ment.”

Seep­er­sad high­light­ed the pub­lic’s grow­ing sense of help­less­ness as a sig­nif­i­cant is­sue.

“We’ve be­come de­sen­si­tised to crime,” he ex­plained.

“The con­stant bom­bard­ment of crime re­ports in the me­dia and on so­cial me­dia may numb us to its im­pact. It’s on­ly when you ex­pe­ri­ence it per­son­al­ly that you tru­ly grasp its sever­i­ty.”

He stressed that crime can­not be dis­missed as some­one else’s prob­lem.

“If we ig­nore it, it will even­tu­al­ly be­come our prob­lem or that of our loved ones,” he warned.

“We need an all-of-so­ci­ety, all-of-gov­ern­ment ap­proach to tack­ling crime.”

One of the prac­ti­cal mea­sures Seep­er­sad is ad­vo­cat­ing is “tar­get hard­en­ing,” which in­volves en­hanc­ing the se­cu­ri­ty of homes, ve­hi­cles nd peo­ple to make them less vul­ner­a­ble to crime.

“Sim­ple ac­tions, such as in­stalling track­ing sys­tems in cars or im­prov­ing home se­cu­ri­ty with bur­glar-proof­ing, can make a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence,” he sug­gest­ed.

While recog­nis­ing the cru­cial role of law en­force­ment, Seep­er­sad al­so called for a nu­anced ap­proach that in­clud­ed pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary and ter­tiary pre­ven­tion strate­gies.

“Pri­ma­ry pre­ven­tion in­volves broad-based ini­tia­tives like val­ues ed­u­ca­tion in schools. Sec­ondary pre­ven­tion tar­gets in­di­vid­u­als at high risk of of­fend­ing, and ter­tiary pre­ven­tion fo­cus­es on those al­ready in­volved in crime, such as in­mates.”

He al­so called for a re­assess­ment of le­gal firearm own­er­ship.

“Peo­ple are turn­ing to il­le­gal firearms out of fear and des­per­a­tion,” he said.

“In­stead of mak­ing it hard­er to legal­ly own a firearm, we should stream­line the process, en­sur­ing prop­er vet­ting and psy­cho­log­i­cal checks.”

He ad­vo­cat­ed for im­proved pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion on self-de­fence laws.

“Many peo­ple feel help­less be­cause they are not in­formed about their rights.

“We need to ed­u­cate cit­i­zens on how they can pro­tect them­selves with­in the le­gal frame­work.”


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