Crim­i­nal­i­ty has es­ca­lat­ed over time and has main­tained a steady pres­ence in our so­ci­ety, as re­flect­ed in our un­chang­ing crime sit­u­a­tion and sta­tis­tics, re­gard­less of the lev­el of gov­ern­ment in­volve­ment in crime pre­ven­tion.

The re­cent mile­stone of 100 mur­ders be­tween Jan­u­ary 1 and April 11 and the com­ments by the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty caught my at­ten­tion. And I am grate­ful it has, as I am al­ways con­cerned about re­main­ing sen­si­tised to crime and the threat to safe­ty in the so­ci­ety in which I live.

The trend or im­proved tra­jec­to­ry does not cap­ture my lived re­al­i­ty, so I am al­ways un­der­whelmed by which year or which ad­min­is­tra­tion “is en­joy­ing” or “has pro­duced” low­er rates of crime. If I were pay­ing close at­ten­tion (and I am not), the head­lines would be­tray a coun­try with­out the so­lu­tions that act to abate crime and make the cit­i­zen­ry feel safer.

The min­is­ter’s as­sur­ance that the “Gov­ern­ment is not sit­ting idly by” as a re­sponse to the ques­tion of the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to ad­dress vi­o­lent crimes of­fers no com­fort. Rather, cyn­i­cism rose bil­ious­ly. This “work in progress”, the “many things hap­pen­ing at the min­istry” and his self-procla­ma­tion that he is a “go-get­ter” quell no anx­i­ety, as the head­lines con­tin­ue to scream crimes and vi­o­lence of many gen­res.

The minute dif­fer­ences in the es­ca­la­tion of crime here of­fer slight psy­cho­log­i­cal re­lief, even if the sta­tis­tics say the cri­sis is not es­ca­lat­ing (to be clear, it does not say that). We will con­tin­ue to live in a state with no true ex­pe­ri­ence of se­cu­ri­ty un­til our high crime base­line con­sis­tent­ly low­ers over a pe­ri­od of years.

And so, it makes no sense that we are pro­claimed safer un­til we feel safe.

Our cur­rent cir­cum­stances are frag­ile; we live con­stant­ly in a state of man­aged un­ease. We go about our days with the dai­ly life of school, work, church, com­merce and com­mu­ni­ty, all against a back­drop of qui­et vig­i­lance. We may not be pan­icked or even con­scious of pan­ic as we adapt to the in­se­cu­ri­ty, cal­cu­lat­ing the places we at­tend and mea­sur­ing the ad­just­ments to rou­tines.

Oc­ca­sion­al­ly, I am re­mind­ed of how my mind is con­stant­ly as­sess­ing risks. I slow down at traf­fic lights and see peo­ple or a per­son walk­ing in the di­rec­tion of my ve­hi­cle, and I in­stant­ly check the doors, re­move my pock­et­book from my seat, and re­call what I have as a de­fence tool in my car or on my per­son. Many of us do this con­stant scan­ning for dan­ger or have high anx­i­ety in pub­lic places.

When I go out walk­ing in the evenings, I reen­act so many sce­nar­ios be­fore I reach 10,000 steps that I of­ten won­der if ex­er­cis­ing in un­cer­tain­ty is an ex­er­cise in fu­til­i­ty, do­ing more dam­age to my health.

The lev­el of hy­per­vig­i­lance amazes me. I have seen so many ver­sions of how to hide a body or mask a crime that some­times every ve­hi­cle or per­son that pass­es me feels like a po­ten­tial crime in mo­tion.

In our high-vi­o­lence con­text, many com­mu­ni­ties na­tion­wide repli­cate this para­noia, and over time, such con­di­tions re­shape peo­ple and mod­i­fy the na­tion­al psy­che. Psy­chol­o­gists agree that con­stant ex­po­sure to vi­o­lence con­tributes to chron­ic stress and hy­per­vig­i­lance.

Even if most of the cit­i­zen­ry does not ex­pe­ri­ence or en­counter vi­o­lence first-hand, peo­ple are bur­dened by the men­tal prox­im­i­ty to vi­o­lence. And as so­cial me­dia and the steady drum­beat of head­lines am­pli­fy ex­po­sure to vi­o­lent events, there is a high­er op­por­tu­ni­ty for vic­ar­i­ous trau­ma­ti­sa­tion and com­mu­ni­ty grief and fear. The re­sult is a pop­u­la­tion that is func­tion­ing un­der strain.

Equal­ly con­cern­ing is the nor­mal­i­sa­tion of vi­o­lence. When mur­der be­comes rou­tine news, emo­tion­al re­spons­es can be dull, giv­ing way to res­ig­na­tion. This qui­et de­sen­si­ti­sa­tion may pro­tect a per­son in the short term, but it risks erod­ing em­pa­thy, civic trust and col­lec­tive hope over time.

The min­is­ter is al­so re­port­ed as al­lud­ing to the high crime lev­el not nec­es­sar­i­ly be­ing sta­tis­ti­cal­ly re­lat­ed to gang ac­tiv­i­ty/de­viance but to the “be­hav­iour of some cit­i­zens,” stat­ing, “the anger, the frus­tra­tion, the hurt, and most of all, the con­trol of prop­er­ty, is (sic) re­sult­ing in a lot of these things tak­ing place.”

“If the po­lice put out in the pub­lic do­main the in­for­ma­tion that we have about mur­ders, very few of it will be gang-re­lat­ed, eh.... We have be­come a ma­te­ri­alised so­ci­ety,” the news sto­ry quot­ed him as say­ing.

What­ev­er!

T&T re­mains in a high-vi­o­lence equi­lib­ri­um, not a low-crime one. The con­stant psy­cho­log­i­cal strain from homi­cides, gun vi­o­lence and sim­i­lar is­sues may even be af­fect­ing oth­er forms of bru­tal­i­ty, as in­di­vid­u­als silent­ly car­ry the bur­den and frus­tra­tions of liv­ing in a high-vi­o­lence so­ci­ety.

Per­haps the min­is­ter al­so has in­for­ma­tion on how one type of vi­o­lence cor­re­lates to oth­ers, and maybe he would be gra­cious enough to re­lease it in­to the pub­lic do­main as part of our un­der­stand­ing of the facts. This may in­form how we ap­proach our heal­ing, ad­dress­ing the so­cial de­ter­mi­nants of crime, crim­i­nal­i­ty and vi­o­lence.

The front-page head­line be­low the one about the min­is­ter’s com­ment on the 100 mur­ders read, “33,000 do­mes­tic vi­o­lence re­ports record­ed in 14 years.”