Today, as we reflect on the crime scene, and what it is doing to the minds of so many Bahamians, we remember, and draw to your attention some of what the prime minister had to say about crime, its impact, and the fear it spawns in the community at large.
This Monday past, the new information reaching us suggested that the police are having a real fight on their hands, as they try to fend of the predations of any number of criminals. But, even as we note what is happening in the Bahamas, the issue of crime must be placed in its relevant regional, and international frames of reference.
In this regard, Jamaican scholar and professor, Norman Girvan notes that recent reports provide compelling evidence that the steep increase in criminal violence in the Greater Caribbean region is linked to broader developments in the hemisphere, and globally.
The problem has been receiving increased international attention over the past 20 years and especially since the decade of the 1990s. A series of inter-linked factors, loosely associated with the course of globalisation and the end of the Cold War, appear to be at work.
First, global inequality has increased significantly since the early 1980s, both within and between nations. The debt crisis and structural adjustment programmes have taken a heavy toll in human and social costs. Social safety nets have disintegrated in eastern and southern Europe and in the failed states in parts of Africa. Human security, in basic economic and social terms, has deteriorated.
The cities of the South-and increasingly those of the North– are crowded with desperate people, especially young males, willing to try desperate means to get their share of the economic pie.
Second, arms and ammunition are in plentiful supply in a huge underground trade: supplies have been augmented by the break-up of the Soviet system and the end of the wars of liberation in Africa and of the civil wars in Central America.
Third, globalisation has facilitated the spread of transnational crime syndicates. Deregulation of financial systems and capital flows have enabled the transfer and channelling of funds into legitimate businesses. Trade liberalisation has given rise to porous borders. Rising human insecurity has fuelled drug abuse. Prostitution and human smuggling have become integral parts of the global crime business.
And fourth, fiscal deficits have made it increasingly difficult for many governments to discharge their responsibilities in the area of security. As criminal resources have grown, state resources have shrunk.
As we have previously noted the economic impact of crime on the cost of living and competitiveness is staggering, a coalition of business organizations found.
Petty crimes like employee theft and shoplifting, in particular, are having a significant adverse effect on businesses, the economy and consumers, according to the Semi-Annual Economic Outlook Survey.
The economic cost to just a small sampling of businesses exceeded $7.2 million, the report said.
ﾓExtrapolating this cost throughout the economy would place the overall cost well into many millions of dollars,ﾔ it continued. ﾓIt is particularly evident that during times of economic stagnation criminal activities cause a huge drain on businesses, on the economy, competitiveness, and investments, as well as adding to the high cost of living for many Bahamians.ﾔ The point here being, that crime costs everyone something.
Words can be used in any number of distinctive ways, as instruments, tools, and playthings. They soothe, and they wound. They make careers, and they can end them. Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Perry G. Christie knows this as well, if not better than most politicians.
In one of his recent speeches he demonstrated the potent power of words, when he rhetorically asked: Tell me: what gives these thugs the right to smash somebodyﾒs front door down and then march up the stairs and rape a manﾒs wife right in front of him with a gun pressed against his head?
What kind of animals, what kind of brute beasts have we created in this land? What kind of animal can chop a woman up right in front of her infant children? What kind of mindless savage can shoot someone in his head just because he looked at him the wrong way? What have we come to when you can walk all your days in the footsteps of the Lord, leading a good, decent and upright life, only to come face to face in your bedroom one night with someone who doesnﾒt only want the little money you have, he wants your life too ﾖ and for no reason at all, except for the diabolical thrill of seeing you die!
Tell me: what gives them the right?
This is how the matter was put then: Perry Christie and this new PLP Government now solemnly declare an unrelenting war on crime. Enough is enough! The time has come to take our country back so people donﾒt have to stay cooped up in their homes, afraid to even go to sleep. The time has come to take back our streets so that you donﾒt have to be afraid to walk the streets by day or drive your car by night. The time has come to root the human rot out of our land so that the good are no longer hostage to the bad and the ugly. It is time for goodness and Godliness to triumph once more over wickedness and evil. An end to this madness!
An obviously angry, and determined prime minister then promised: The Police are going to be given all the tools and all the resources they need to break the back of crime. The Commissioner of Police is a man in whom I have the utmost confidence and he and his excellent team of officers have already put in train a new series of measures and strategies that I am obviously not going to speak about in public but which are already beginning to make an impressive difference in the level of crime. Even more innovative intelligence-led policing strategies are soon to be put in train. The end result, I am confident, will be a major reduction in crime in our country.
The problem, say local politicians, is not confined to the violent island of Jamaica, which has one of the highest murder rates in the world, but is evident across the Caribbean, a popular winter vacation destination for Americans and Europeans.
Officials say minor crimes like pick-pocketing, and harassment of visitors can have a devastating effect on tourism throughout the region. They cite harassment on beaches for the Bahamas losing its edge over other destinations.
“Why would a visitor want to leave a clean, safe, all-inclusive resort to be exposed to filth and rip-offs? How many times have we seen dead animals in the streets on the way to resorts?” Bahamas Prime Minister Perry Christie said at a recent Caribbean Tourism Conference.
“A band of no-good young fellows does not have the right in our countries to cause the nationals to suffer,” he said. “A priority must be placed on stamping out criminal behavior.”
Economic sluggishness and rising unemployment has often been linked to increases in crime, which in turn discourages tourists from visiting not only the country in question but the whole region.
“In the context of people traveling globally, they are not distinguishing in any great detail between a country here and a country there in this region,” Christie said.
This is some of what the prime minister had to say about crime in the Caribbean and The Bahamas. The level of violent crime in our society is simply unacceptable. The level of viciousness in the commission of murders and rapes and robberies in our society is simply intolerable. There is no other way to put it.
In response, we make the point that words have a way ﾖlike boomerangs- of returning to those who hurled them. The current administration would do well to remember some, if not all of the words spoken when their party the met in solemn convention, just a few short months ago.
On any given day there are any number of reports in media concerning the incidence, impact, and fear of crime are taken on face value, there is war going on between criminals, the police, and the public at large. And, as this war rages, the attentive public remembers a prime ministerﾒs words and promises. Today, we count ourselves in the thick of that mix.
If some of the new information in media is to be believed, there are extremely disturbing reports which speak about armed robberies; criminals shot down by the police; ordinary citizens being intimidated, roughed up and, otherwise, frightened out of their wits. In some instances, this intolerable situation amounts to terror, pure and simple.
The question today turns does not turn on whether or not the prime minister was or is sincere, but on whether his administration has the capacity to do more to bring word and deed closer together. Today the gap between them is wide, and growing.
Editorial, The Bahama Journal
