Minister of State in the Office of the Attorney General with responsibility for Crime Prevention, Corey Lane, says the present administration remains committed to strengthening its crime prevention measures.
During his contribution to the Budget debate in the House of Assembly on Thursday, Lane said that though traditional ways of tackling crime have worked to some extent, his ministry intends to address the situation on the island on a deeper level.
“Traditional crime prevention has been seen as things one can do to prevent oneself from becoming a victim of crime. But we are going deeper to seek to prevent one from becoming a criminal in the first place. We as a government have quickly activated our crime prevention strategies and programmes. This minister and his team will continue to roll out a very ambitious programme, that I will continue to say will require a whole of government support and a whole of government approach.
He however cautioned: “I would not mislead this country or this Chamber. The reality is that the results that we would all like to see would not come tomorrow morning, nor next week, nor next month, particularly when we are talking about our medium to long-term initiatives. I give this House and the country the assurance that our crime prevention measures and strategies are designed significantly to abort crime, to sharpen the minds of our young people and to present them with a number of opportunities.”
While sharing crime statistics in the Lower House, Lane said that despite the focus on gun-related incidents over the past several months, given the 35 firearms deaths reported in 2022, the government was focused on bringing all forms of crime down.
“We had 5 803 reported crimes for 2022; 43 homicides, 35 of them firearm-enabled, another 205 gun-related offences. The reality is that the work is to bring down all of that crime. So whereas the focus may be on violent crime and homicide in this first phase, understand that the mission too, is to bring down crime overall. I wanted to make that clear.
“We had about 1 800 crimes against the person, over 2 200 crimes against property and over 1 700 crimes of public order breaches where drug crimes made up the bulk of those. …There were 119 white collar crimes.”
Lane also added that a new national peace programme was coming.
“We want to roll out the National Peace Programme, which will see among many other initiatives, a programme in parenting. We want to roll out the programme with the national life coaches, to ensure that we can wrap around some of our citizens who are not getting it right. [Those] who are affected by so many factors in life, and then in turn are affecting this society through so many factors that they portray onto our [country].” (SB)
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