St. Lu­cia’’s Prime MIn­is­ter Phillip J.Pierre Mon­day said there is need to quick­ly ex­plore new ap­proach­es to the prob­lem of vi­o­lent crime in the Caribbean.

Ad­dress­ing the re­gion­al sym­po­sium on vi­o­lence as a pub­lic health is­sue, Pierre said that a 2017 In­ter-Ame­ican De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) study on the crime and vi­o­lence sit­u­a­tion in the re­gion not­ed that while the “Caribbean does not have a crime prob­lem; it has a vi­o­lence prob­lem”.

He said whie the study stat­ed that gangs are great­ly re­spon­si­ble for crime and vi­o­lence in the Caribbean, it went on to say that vi­o­lence is be­lieved to be­gin in the home.

Pierre said that the au­thors of the re­port were sur­prised by the mag­ni­tude of the vi­o­lence in the re­gion and point­ed out that this helped per­pet­u­ate the prob­lem.

“The re­port as­sert­ed that Caribbean gov­ern­ments had not found the right bal­ance be­tween pre­ven­tion and con­trol of vi­o­lence and urged them to repli­cate suc­cess­ful vi­o­lence pre­ven­tion pro­grammes from oth­er coun­tries.”

He said St. Lu­cia’s own ex­pe­ri­ence de­mand­ed “that we quick­ly ex­plore new ap­proach­es to the prob­lem of vi­o­lent crime in our coun­try”.

Pierre said that the homi­cide rate in his coun­try jumped from a to­tal of 30 in 2016, to 60 in 2017, ris­ing to a record 76 in 2022, and to date 27 so far this year.

“The lat­est fig­ure means that we are cur­rent­ly av­er­ag­ing two homi­cides per week. There must be a halt to this. The ma­jor­i­ty of these homi­cides have been firearm-re­lat­ed and have in­volved young peo­ple both as vic­tims and per­pe­tra­tors. The fact that the ma­jor­i­ty of these mur­ders are con­cen­trat­ed in one area is of no com­fort.

“This ris­ing crime rate is oc­cur­ring in the con­text of var­i­ous poli­cies and laws that have been in place to com­bat vi­o­lent crime,” Pierre said, not­ing that the Crim­i­nal Code is bol­stered by laws such as the An­ti-Gang Act, which pro­hibits gangs and gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty and pro­vides for ag­gra­vat­ed cir­cum­stances jus­ti­fy­ing se­vere sen­tences in in­stances where the con­vict­ed per­son is a po­lice of­fi­cer or a gang leader.

He said the Firearms Act ad­dress­es the car­ry­ing and use of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion, as well as the il­lic­it man­u­fac­tur­ing of and traf­fick­ing in firearms, am­mu­ni­tion, and ex­plo­sives; and amend­ments to the Act last year, im­posed much stiffer penal­ties for its con­tra­ven­tions. Crit­i­cal re­lat­ed leg­is­la­tion, in­clud­ing the Mon­ey Laun­der­ing (Pre­ven­tion) Act and the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act, fur­ther dis­in­cen­tivize crime by pro­vid­ing for the for­fei­ture or con­fis­ca­tion of the pro­ceeds of spec­i­fied crimes.

Pierre said last month, the St. Lu­cia Par­lia­ment passed leg­is­la­tion to ex­tend po­lice pow­ers by the Sup­pres­sion of Es­ca­lat­ed Crime (Po­lice Pow­ers) Act, adding “we urged the po­lice to ob­serve the hu­man rights of cit­i­zens and fol­low on­ly le­gal meth­ods”.

He not­ed al­so that St. Lu­cia last month re­quest­ed as­sis­tance from the Bar­ba­dos-based Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sys­tem (RSS) to quell an es­ca­lat­ing crime sit­u­a­tion in the south­ern town of Vieux Fort.

“The scale and bar­bar­i­ty of the vi­o­lence that oc­curred in that town over one week­end is un­par­al­leled in our coun­try’s his­to­ry. What is par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing about the sit­u­a­tion there is that while the homi­cides are gang-re­lat­ed, the per­pe­tra­tors have seem­ing­ly tar­get­ed fam­i­ly mem­bers of their per­ceived foes, rais­ing their crim­i­nal­i­ty to a new and dif­fer­ent lev­el.

“This sit­u­a­tion calls for more than a law en­force­ment re­sponse but one that is com­pre­hen­sive and mul­ti­di­men­sion­al, that will seek to find and erad­i­cate the roots of this can­cer­ous vi­o­lence. “But as we all know, Mr. Chair­man, vi­o­lence, par­tic­u­lar­ly or­ga­nized gang vi­o­lence, is a dis­ease that is not eas­i­ly ar­rest­ed, es­pe­cial­ly in a re­ac­tionary mode and in a sce­nario where it is aid­ed and abet­ted by the in­flux of guns and am­mu­ni­tion from out­side of the coun­try, no­tably from the Unit­ed States.”

Pier­rer said he wel­comed the sym­po­sium as “we in St. Lu­cia are in the ear­ly stages of im­ple­ment­ing so­cial and crime sup­pres­sion pro­grammes that can pro­vide an av­enue for res­o­lu­tion of that sit­u­a­tion.

“My gov­ern­ment is con­vinced that crime must be tack­led sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly and as a pub­lic health con­cern. While we con­tin­ue to pro­vide un­prece­dent­ed re­sources to our po­lice force, it has be­come clear that on­ly a mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary, proac­tive, and ev­i­dence-based ap­proach can bring about a sus­tain­able abate­ment of crime and an­ti-so­cial be­hav­iour in our coun­try.”

Pierre said that there is al­so the cru­cial mat­ter of di­vert­ing our young peo­ple away from crime, adding that he is al­so hope­ful that the sym­po­sium will pro­duce a re­gion­al plan of ac­tion to tack­le crime in a proac­tive and pre­ven­tive man­ner”.

He said while pub­lic health and pub­lic se­cu­ri­ty share sim­i­lar pol­i­cy ob­jec­tives as they both aim to pro­vide the max­i­mum ben­e­fit for the most peo­ple, in con­sid­er­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion of the pub­lic health ap­proach to crime and vi­o­lence in the re­gion, there are a num­ber of ob­ser­va­tions and ques­tions to which the sym­po­sium can pro­vide an­swers.

At the re­gion­al lev­el, he said he sees par­al­lels be­tween the role played by the Trinidad-based Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) in a pub­lic health con­text and Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty (IM­PACS).

“There­fore I see a re­for­mu­lat­ed IM­PACS that will adapt CARPHA tech­niques to take the lead in the ap­pli­ca­tion of the re­gion­al pub­lic health ap­proach to the pre­ven­tion of crime and vi­o­lence.”

But he ac­knowl­edged that a pub­lic health ap­proach to pub­lic se­cu­ri­ty will re­quire huge in­vest­ments in ca­pac­i­ty build­ing, both in terms of equip­ment and train­ing of front­line per­son­nel.

“Ide­al­ly, we will need a com­pre­hen­sive as­sess­ment of the train­ing needs for a whole-of-gov­ern­ment and whole-of-so­ci­ety ap­proach to crime pre­ven­tion and con­trol. We will need a corps of well-trained and re­silient coun­selors, and psy­chol­o­gists in our schools and com­mu­ni­ties who can han­dle the emo­tion­al stress of work­ing with at-risk chil­dren and pro­vide fam­i­ly ther­a­py for young peo­ple at risk of gang in­volve­ment and ex­ploita­tion.

“This ap­proach will al­low the rel­e­vant agen­cies to as­sess what I call “the epi­demi­ol­o­gy of crime.” By that I mean, un­der­stand­ing the un­der­ly­ing eco­nom­ic, so­cial, and en­vi­ron­men­tal dri­vers of crime and risk fac­tors and ap­ply­ing tar­get­ed in­ter­ven­tions to help di­vert in­di­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies, and com­mu­ni­ties at high-risk, away from vi­o­lent crime,” PIerre said.

CMC/or/ir/2023

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Apr 17, CMC