In today’s Bahamas there are literally tens of thousands of Bahamians who directly live off the proceeds of crime and an untold number of others who do so indirectly.
Take for example, the question of guns and drugs and their introduction into The Bahamas. It would be little more than a no-brainer to conclude that drugs and guns are being smuggled into the country by people who have the means to do so.
The people with the means to do these kinds of operations would be the types who routinely export and import goods. To the casual observer, some of these types of criminals would seem to be veritable pillars of the community.
Those who facilitate them could be seen as middle-men.
At the bottom is the man or woman with the gun.
With this, then, as context and background, our view of the entire matter involving crime in The Bahamas is that Bahamians should wake up and understand that this nation’s moral fiber has already been undermined.
Chaos and anarchy beckon as the rule of law is -inch by inch- being undermined by a conspiracy of criminals in high and low places.
Our view is that the entire criminal justice system is in need of urgent overhaul. This can only come about if government, its social partners and civil society are truly serious.
We are yet to be persuaded.
By way of reminder, then, we preface what remains of this commentary on the criminal justice system in The Bahamas with a widely accepted proposition that suggests that “the rule of law is the cornerstone of the protection of human rights and systems of governance based on the values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“Yet domestic institutions that should uphold the rule of law are often seriously flawed. For example, in many countries criminal justice systems are undermined by institutionalized discrimination, lack of resources and corruption.”
So says Amnesty International. We agree.
Those whose business it is to commit crimes do what they think they must do in order to be successful in their nefarious enterprises. And as the facts would show, many of these people are extremely successful.
Practically everybody in this country of ours knows some criminal or the other who has – as it were – struck gold. This revelation comes with but one caveat, which is that the successful criminal is invariably the one wearing the so-called ‘white collar’.
Sadly, the public’s attention is hardly ever focused on this kind of criminal. Instead the focus is for all intents and purposes on those men and women who commit those types of offences that could be characterized as being ‘brutally personal’. These would include matters like rape, robbery and home invasions.
When these increase, the public can expect some dramatic gesture or the other from the relevant authorities. And so it has been in the past few days.
As the police have reported: “Faced with increased firearm use and 11 murders for the first two months of the year, police officers will today begin a multi-pronged initiative in an “aggressive” three-month crackdown on firearm-related crime.
“The nationwide initiative will involve the uniform and plain-clothes branches of the force, along with the Criminal Detective and Drug Enforcement units. Officers from the Royal Bahamas Police Force Band will also play an “integral” part in the initiative, which will involve the band reviewing its slate of engagements in order to provide the number of officers needed for the operation.”
The attentive public has also been informed by Chief Supt. Christopher McCoy that “an island-wide operation will target persons on the streets and will take the form of aggressive search and stops of suspected vehicles and persons.”
The public has also been told that “at the end of three months we will revisit the operation, look at the stats and see exactly where we are.”
Quite evidently, we will then know where we are.
While we do most sincerely wish the police the very best; we confess that we are hardly ever optimistic about these kinds of ventures.
This is so because we are absolutely convinced that crime is endemic in Bahamian society, and that as such it will take an unprecedented effort on the part of most Bahamians to root it out.
Editorial from The Bahama Journal
