GIVING URGENCY TO REGION'S CRIME FIGHT
Barbados 'law and order'report offers some options
By Rickey Singh
Guyana Chronicle
August 29, 2004
RATHER than continue to squabble over timing and conditionalities for "full engagement" with the interim Haitian regime, Caribbean Community leaders should quickly decide on a revised agenda for their coming special summit in Port-of-Spain to give new emphasis to combating the terrifying crime situations plaguing many member states, including Jamaica.
The Community leaders have some nine weeks before the proposed November special summit to be in readiness with new ideas and attitudes for a comprehensive collective review of policies and strategies to combat serious crimes and minimise the threats to security.
It is their burden to erase the public impression that they have not been sufficiently focused at their recent inter-sessional and summit meetings for concerted regional responses to the challenges posed by the criminals.
In comparison, that is, to the time and energy spent on political issues, like the Haitian situation, and getting themselves in readiness for the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME).
Generally, media briefings on CARICOM's crime and security agenda have lacked specificities, laden with platitudes, and rarely provide new information on initiatives being pursued, without having to give away sensitive intelligence information.
Perhaps the Community leaders could make use of their forthcoming special summit in Port-of-Spain to show the difference. If, that is, they could first agree to add crime and security to CSME-readiness as the two top priorities for their work agenda over two days.
The security of our CARICOM societies is increasingly coming under serious threats from criminals with alarm bells ringing across the political divide amid mounting fears and panic as cities, urban and rural communities fall victim to escalating armed robberies, killings, kidnappings, vicious bodily harm and sheer terrorism.
In Trinidad and Tobago, where a population remains challenged to avoid being numb to nerve-wracking kidnappings for ransom, and killings linked to narco-trafficking, gang warfare and other crimes, the President of the Republic, Maxwell Richards, considers the country to be "at war" facing an "internal enemy".
Across in Jamaica, confronted with endemic illegal drugs and gun-running crimes and a shocking murder toll that exceeded 1,000 in 2003, Prime Minister P.J. Patterson found it necessary last weekend to defend the performance of his National Security Minister, Peter Phillips, while warning that spiralling crime "poses a major danger" to renewal of economic growth.
In Guyana, there are now renewed fears of the resumption of communal terror on East Coast villages following some vicious cases of killings, including a policeman, and armed robberies that have provoked new demands for joint anti-crime operations by the police and army.
A Bajan surprise
But the country that may provide the surprise for those too focused on worse-crime scenarios in countries like Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana, would be Barbados - the major tourism destination of the Eastern Caribbean that works methodically to protect its image from being tarnished by the plague of criminality.
For every Caribbean state that depends to any significant extent on tourism, the crime epidemic is dangerous news. Barbados, Jamaica, The Bahamas, St. Lucia and Antigua for sure know this only too well.
When, therefore, British and Canadian websites recently posted advisories alerting their nationals to reported incidents of rape and armed robberies of tourists in Barbados, the country's Tourism Minister, Noel Lynch, moved swiftly to quell any notion that the country was anything but "a very safe place".
The Minister's anxiety is understandable. But the Barbadian people and their Caribbean cousins living there would know that it is certainly no longer the "tranquil paradise" of tourist magazine and brochures.
In its just-released report `The National Commission on Law and Order’ in Barbados notes, in a candid, enlightening overview of law enforcement:
"Over the last 25 years, Barbados has been experiencing an unusually high number of serious and violent crimes, with murder, armed robberies and reckless violence among the youth becoming quite alarming...
"This has been accompanied by excessive involvement in the drug culture, both in supporting transshipment operations and in the increasing use of illicit drugs across all sections of the society.
"Perhaps the most troublesome feature", the report states, "is the frequency of drive-by shootings and the uncontrolled violence among drug dealers. This environment has resulted in a considerable fear of crime in residential communities and the business sector...."
National Commissions
The work of the Commission has coincided with similar bodies, though with variations in terms of reference, created by CARICOM governments in response to a 2002 decision by the Community's Heads of Government to establish national commissions on crime or the broader concept of law and order.
If, therefore, we are to be guided by their own statements and public outcries on the terrifying crime scenarios in a number of Community states - including this one - then including crime and security for an action-oriented discussion at the coming November summit could prove useful.
Updated assessments from their respective National Security Minister and the Regional Task Force on Crime and Security, plus recommendations for concerted action from the Association of Caribbean Commissioners of Police could provide the basis for a special working session without affecting allotted time for CSME-readiness.
After all, the success of the CSME itself would very much depend on the capacity of our governments to have the upper hand on criminals and those bent on undermining law and order in our Community states working towards the realisation of a common economic space.
Our leaders must be seen to be acting in unison and with haste in the war against crime rather than engaging in their separate lamentations as the criminal underworld poses increasing threats to stability, peace and progress in one CARICOM state after another.
The just-tabled report in the Barbados Parliament from the National Commission on Law and Order offers some very important recommendations that could also be taken on board in any regional review on new initiatives on crime and security.
In their report, the 14-member Commission, comprising experienced and respected members of a wide cross-section of the society, has also examined sensitive contemporary social issues that have engaged public debates at various levels.
These include whether or not to decriminalise the use of illicit drugs like marijuana; legalise prostitution and amend the law on sexual offences to make legal anal sex (homosexual practice) between consulting adults in private.
Their answer is `no’ to legalising marijuana even for personal use. They favour the legalising and licensing of brothels to facilitate the world's oldest profession; and divided themselves over the introduction of condoms in prisons for health reasons, while collectively rejecting, changing the law to decriminalise anal sex practices, even by consenting adults.