The Cost of Crime in the Caribbean
Editorial
Stabroek News
May 11, 2007
A recent World Bank report says the Caribbean is now the most crime-ridden region of the world, except for countries fighting a civil war. With an annual average of 30 murders per 100,000 residents, we are less safe than Colombia and South Africa (both notoriously violent in the1980s and 1990s), and significantly more dangerous than the United States (6 murders per 100,000). The economic consequences of this decline are large and growing. Direct foreign investment across the region has fallen nearly 9%: in Jamaica, for example, it declined last year from US$682m to US$621m; in Trinidad from US$940m to US$882m.
This loss of confidence has reflected another remarkable statistic: the seven countries with the world's highest emigration rates for college graduates are all in the Caribbean (Guyana heads this list with a staggering 89%). Last week, the Wall Street Journal described the elaborate security arrangements made by one college graduate who had returned to Jamaica. "Before Joanna Banks leaves her Pan Caribbean Financial Services office in Kingston, she calls a security company and orders a car to trail her to her gated community in the hills overlooking the financial district. Her armed guards check inside her home and, radioing an 'all clear' to their command post, escort her through the front door." Ten years ago that would have read like a description of life in a failed state, but in contemporary Jamaica it has become part of daily life. But for how much longer can the business class in that country, or indeed elsewhere in the Caribbean, insulate themselves from the wider society?
The domestic impact of crime is sometimes difficult to calculate, but the report offers several striking illustrations of how bad the situation has become. In Jamaica, violence is now the chief source of injuries that require treatment at a hospital. Local small businesses spend an average of 17% of their revenues on security and nearly a third of all businesses have hired armed security guards. The amount of money consumed by these measures is, of course, a huge waste of resources. The report observes that "estimates suggest that were Jamaica and Haiti to reduce their rates of homicide to the level of Costa Rica, each country would see an increase in its growth rate of 5.4 percent annually."
But, even if violence is left out of the equation, there are wider problems that admit no easy solutions. Ten Caribbean countries were included in Transparency International's latest Corruption Perception index. Haiti was ranked as the most corrupt country of the 163 that were assessed: Guyana (121) was well below Suriname (90), Trinidad and Tobago (79), and Jamaica (61). The only cause for regional pride was Barbados (24), a position that places it "ahead of many European countries".
Of course there are no easy solutions to developmental problems like crime and violence, but we often discuss them as though there were. The "criminal element" has become our shorthand for a vaguely defined group who threatens our way of life. This is a partial truth. Each society creates its criminals, often through indifference and neglect. What distinguishes developed countries from the developing nations that emigrate to them in such large numbers is what they are prepared to do to correct these problems.