KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young says the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is the biggest prob­lem in deal­ing with crime. Young, al­so a Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, said that as crime af­fects every­one, the Gov­ern­ment is con­scious and very dis­turbed by it.

Speak­ing as a pan­elist on the BBC’s World Ser­vice World Ques­tion with Jon­ny Dy­mond last week, Young told the au­di­ence that the Gov­ern­ment im­ple­ment­ed the Pub­lic De­fend­er Sys­tem so that every­one charged with an of­fence has le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion in court. He boast­ed that he was the on­ly Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty who walked the Re­mand Yard prison sev­er­al times de­spite reser­va­tions from the Prison Ser­vice. It was a quest to in­ter­act with re­mand­ed pris­on­ers, where he learnt that many want­ed judge-alone tri­als to get speed­i­er out­comes.

Young said the Gov­ern­ment al­so im­ple­ment­ed more crim­i­nal courts.

“It is my be­lief that the biggest prob­lem we have in deal­ing with crim­i­nal­i­ty in Trinidad & To­ba­go is the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. Every time we try to ad­dress it, im­me­di­ate­ly, sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers comes to the fore­front, which is pro­tect­ed in Trinidad & To­ba­go by a con­sti­tu­tion,” Young said.

But as the Gov­ern­ment fights crime, that transna­tion­al na­ture of it af­fects T&T: a small is­land state with prox­im­i­ty to South Amer­i­ca. Young as­sured the au­di­ence that the Gov­ern­ment is work­ing with the Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and oth­er na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty bod­ies to ad­dress crime by em­ploy­ing tech­nol­o­gy and boost­ing po­lice morale. Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes said while crime sta­tis­tics show why peo­ple should be afraid, they al­ready are. How­ev­er, Haynes said peo­ple want to know how an­ti-crime mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed with the $5 bil­lion bud­get al­lo­ca­tion worked. “We nev­er hear at the end of the year or the end of a stip­u­lat­ed pe­ri­od, any ac­knowl­edge­ment of what works, what did not work, what could work bet­ter in terms of im­prove­ment,” Haynes said.

Mean­while, de­vel­op­men­tal econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs said cit­i­zens see the TTPS as a panacea, where peo­ple look to it to solve crimes. How­ev­er, Attzs does not see this as a help­ful ap­proach, say­ing that un­less the TTPS has the ap­pro­pri­ate re­sources, it can­not ad­dress the kinds of chal­lenges T&T faces.

The He­roes Foun­da­tion CEO Lawrence Ar­joon be­lieves T&T does not have a trust­ing so­ci­ety, which starts with lead­er­ship. Ar­joon said politi­cians must set ex­am­ples in Par­lia­ment and re-eval­u­ate their con­duct on po­lit­i­cal plat­forms.

“We can­not be at­tack­ing our own peo­ple and drag­ging every good thing done in this coun­try through the mud be­cause it does not align with our po­lit­i­cal par­ty. We can make a change. We have made a change in this coun­try. When I look at the strides we have made against child abuse in this coun­try, it shows me that there is hope there,” Ar­joon said.

From the au­di­ence, their views on crime dif­fer. One mem­ber ar­gued that hav­ing peo­ple on re­mand for 15 years af­fects the sys­tem’s cred­i­bil­i­ty in serv­ing jus­tice. An­oth­er found that in tack­ling crime, au­thor­i­ties should look in­side the home as crim­i­nals are of­ten the re­sult of poor par­ent­ing, school dropouts, sin­gle par­ents with no sup­port and pover­ty. An­oth­er found that the lack of lo­cal DNA test­ing cen­tres led to a holdup in crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

There was al­so the is­sue of po­lice cor­rup­tion.

On the ques­tion of the Gov­ern­ment’s plans to re­duce T&T’s de­pen­dence on oil and gas and switch to a green econ­o­my, Young said too many peo­ple per­ceived a hy­dro­car­bon-based econ­o­my as wrong. He said the Rus­sia/Ukraine war showed that many Eu­ro­pean coun­tries had to rush to restart coal plants for pow­er when they did not have oil.

“We should thank God we have an oil and gas-based econ­o­my,” he said.

Young said the Gov­ern­ment was the front leader in the Caribbean in im­ple­ment­ing re­new­able en­er­gy, un­der­tak­ing a 112 MW so­lar project while en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty was the biggest glob­al con­ver­sa­tion. He said that as T&T moves on­to new en­er­gy, it will con­tin­ue to work on hy­dro­car­bons un­til the last oil and gas is out of the ground. In terms of di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my, Young said the Gov­ern­ment would fo­cus on us­ing T&T’s ge­o­graph­i­cal lo­ca­tion to ex­pand its mar­itime ship­ping in­dus­try to con­tin­ue its forex earn­ings.

Haynes said T&T was grate­ful for the hy­dro­car­bon in­dus­try but called it a tick­ing clock.