Crime – whether designated white or blue collar – has always been a part of he social decor of The Bahamas. Indeed, when the matter of crime is put in historical perspective, the conclusion one is forced to reach is that Bahamian involvement in widespread criminal wrong doing is part of the social geography of this place.
In the first two weeks of 2003, three young men have already been murdered and the society is not outraged. When crime starts, as it were, to strike home, there is a pressing need for urgent public action. With an economy in trouble, communities in distress and rumblings about the effects of a prolonged slump in the United States of America , attentive Bahamians are becoming anxious and agitated.
Sadly, as they react negatively to these life stresses, some Bahamians are taking their wrath out on those nearest them, thus the new information about ugly crimes against the person. Rape, murder and other expressions of depravity are now so commonplace that they no longer attract alarm and despair. What is happening is that many Bahamians routinely take the view that this is how things are and that nothing important can be done to address the rot.
Take for example, the perennial problem of statutory rape. Year in and year out, available statistics reveal that underage girls are being raped. At the same time, however, very few perpetrators of these crimes are ever brought to justice. This is because in the definition of the issue, focus is placed on the victim, thus the idle community chatter about ‘teenage pregnancy’! Another markedly more serous matter concerns the incidence of gun violence, its intimate connection to the drug trade and the connection both of these have to human suffering, disease and death in this country.
We have it on a most excellent authority that much of the violence in our country is attributable to conflicts between people who were once partners in crime. So, when a person is killed at home, it may be too easy to dismiss these as so-called ‘domestic matters’. In instance after instance resort is made to the idea that some of these killings are so-called crimes of passion. This only begs the question as to why so many families are so riven by pain and conflict that they can be so quickly reduced to a mass of confusion.
We believe that a part of the problem is traceable to powerful forces and factors external to the family unit. Some of these are to be located in an economy which, in its gyrations, often put severe burden on people who believe that they must do whatever it takes to make it in a ‘dog eat dog world’, thus the warfare between so many Bahamian men and women. As a consequence of this distemper, more and more victimized people themselves become predators.
In time, too, they reproduce in their children the characteristics which previously identified them as predators. Interestingly, while most of the public focus is placed upon children from so-called ‘broken homes’, much of the new information shows that many middle class householders are home to appropriately middle class criminals. Some of our nation’s white-collar criminals are incubated in these settings. And, too, there is some evidence to suggest that some of the people who import and package illicit drugs for street level sales, are themselves scions of the rich and famous.
This bleak picture of crime in high and low places in The Bahamas is relieved by the fact that despite public alarm about the high and rising incidence of crime, the truth is that most of Bahamians are hardworking, trustworthy, law-abiding and decent. Which brings us to a central paradox concerning why so many good people are allowing themselves to be ‘spooked” by a criminalized minority of gangsters.
We suspect that a part of the answer is to be found in what is a peculiarly Bahamian response to social issues such as health, education and the provision of other social services. Instead of focusing on public action for the public good, very many Bahamians try desperately to provide these privately, thus the growing contradictions we see in a society where the economy is rich and the government is increasingly beleaguered and hard pressed to do more and more with less and less.
As Senator James Smith notes, the tax system in The Bahamas is regressive, putting the burden for government revenues disproportionately on the least able shoulders, namely those of the working poor. Many sensitive observers of the national political scene make the point that this sorry state of affairs is another contributory source of crime and other anti-social activities in The Bahamas.
Regardless how this matter is ultimately resolved, we reinforce a point we have previously made which is that if Bahamians continue to allow families to fail, schools to disgorge undereducated underachievers and churches to fail in ‘serving the whole man’, they doom themselves to an unending spiral of lawlessness, crime, deviance, suffering, destruction and untimely death. In addition to investing in business growth and development, Bahamians should invest time and effort in building lives. While easier said than done, this can be achieved.
Editorial, The Bahama Journal
