Rising crime, falling values

arbados, like much of the Caribbean, is experiencing a troubling level of criminal activity.  Recently it was revealed that in Jamaica there were some 24 murders in eight days, some 626 so far this year. In Trinidad in one weekend 18 persons were murdered in what the news gatherers called ‘a bloody weekend.’ Many of these killings were perpetrated with the use of high-powered guns. Crime is on the rise in St. Lucia, the Bahamas and Belize. A minister in the Guyana government recently revealed the increasing  level of crime around the Starbroek market in Georgetown.

Crime is persistent across much of Western society. A Sky News report of July 12, 2024 noted that prisons in Britain are currently at 99 per cent capacity. The Sky programme noted that with only 698 spaces left in British jails, they could run out of prison space in three weeks.  That country has a recidivism rate of some 35 per cent. The new Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has responded to that particular issue. His new Justice Secretary Ms. Shibana Mahmood has announced that the government plans to solve the problem of overcrowding by freeing a number of criminals not guilty of severe offences such as rape or murder. Some offenders will be freed after serving 40 per cent of their terms. This, some commentators have observed, could backfire if there is an observable increase in criminal activity on the streets.

Here in Barbados there has been a startling 27 murders for 2024, many of which are seemingly a consequence of gang activity. Rather belatedly, Prime Minister Mottley spoke to the issue of crime in a nation-wide television address. One says belatedly because she has seemed more concerned with the legitimate question of global climate change than with the evidently deteriorating climate of crime, violence, incivility, deviance, indiscipline and general disorder.

Incivility and anti-social behaviour have been evident for some time. I am not a fan of calypso or soca, but I think it was Red Plastic Bag (RPB) who some decades ago noted in song that the country was not well. It was not well then and it may be sicker now. Both political parties, the Barbados Labour Party and the Democratic Labour Party,  which  have formed the government over the past four decades have been less than effective in coping with the psycho-social issues that have plagued this country. They have failed to face the problems head-on. Tom Adams solved the issue of Rocker’s Alley, now much of Bridgetown looks like Rockers’ Alley or worse. The so-called  ZR culture has gone on for some four decades and has a profoundly disruptive influence on school cultures in Barbados across the educational sector.

Two questions inevitably keep recurring in all the debate on crime and criminality. One relates to causality and the other to treatment. Crime is clearly multi-causal coming from any number of factors. Perhaps the critical over-riding cause is the decline in values. Values, attitudes and sensibilities have to be inculcated in people preferably from an early age. The central factor in the rising tide of criminality is the decline in the value consensus in Barbados. Not that we all had a firm and fixed corpus of values and that we all acted consonant with those values, sensibilities and attitudes.  However, we intrinsically seemed to know what was good and bad, what was noble and ignoble, what was of good report and what was not. Today, like in some other areas, these things appear to be non-binary. Values have been deconstructed. One is not sure that what we like to call the old fashioned norms can be reconstructed, recovered and revived.

The cultural ethos of Barbados and much of the region has dissolved. The ‘Idea of Barbados’ if it ever existed has now dissipated.  The institutions of socialisation to traditional norms, the family, the church and the school have lost much of their efficacy leaving an intolerable void.  Nature they say abhors a vacuum and all kinds of things have rushed in to fill the atmospheric black hole.

One cannot ignore Prime Minister Mottley’s address to the Nation on Monday July 15, 2024, if for no other reason than the fact of the extent to which she dominates the political landscape in Barbados. In the Caribbean everything is politics and politics is everything. Besides the State, no other institution has the legal force to address the pathologies in society if it had the political will and the mind to effect corrective measures. The often repeated notion that the Government cannot do it alone is something of a cop-out, intended to absolve the government for its sins of commission and omission.

Like with so many initiatives these days everything can be encapsulated in a convenient acronym. Thus we have the STEP initiative in which all Barbadians are implored to step-up to combat crime and violence. STEP in this case stands for See, Touch, Engage and Participate. It reflects an aspirational vision that is worthy, however too much of it is pitched at the level of rhetoric and wishful thinking. Too much of this ignores the depth of the problem that the Prime Minister herself outlined in the speech. She talked about ‘the nation’s children being desensitised to violence through non-stop playing of video games and the overuse and misuse of social media’.  She warned against ‘closing our eyes and remaining silent’ about the presence of guns.

On Brass tacks on Wednesday July 17 a caller made the insightful point that given the state of organised crime in Barbados it could be personally dangerous to one’s health and wellbeing ‘to see  something and say something’. Host Dr Kristina Hinds herself stated: “There are dangers in coming forward and giving information.” As my mother used to say in her later years, ‘be careful, you don’t know who is who in Barbados today’. Trust used to hold us together. One is not sure that it still does. One gets the impression that Barbadian society is becoming increasingly atomised, breaking into fine particles with little or no cementing glue.

A former primary school principal once told me that she was having trouble with some of the non teaching staff at her school. I asked if she had reported it to the authorities and her response was:  “No way, ‘I don’t want nobody come burning down my house.” Besides it is widely perceived that there is an accountability and transparency deficit on the part of the same government that is now calling for a cooperative effort in fighting crime and violence. If you want a cooperative effort you have to at least be willing to take persons into your confidence. Another caller to Brass Tacks noted that in spite of the breadth of her address, the Prime Minister did not adequately speak to the question of who might be bringing in the drugs and the guns into Barbados. We all need to STEP-UP.