Attorney General Dale Marshall has warned that crime stats alone cannot capture the full scope of the crime challenge facing the island.
Speaking during the presentation of findings from the latest crime report on Tuesday, he stressed that while crime data is invaluable for understanding trends, it falls short of capturing critical societal influences that drive these results.
He called for urgent action to address deep-rooted social issues, particularly within family environments.
“Statistics that also need to be looked at are our societal statistics,” he said.
“Look at the dysfunctional families resulting in our young men and women committing criminal activities, and in this context, we have to look at domestic violence, because our young people live what they see, and as they say, ‘hurt people, hurt people’.”
Pointing to examples of young people exposed to illicit activity within their own homes, Marshall recalled disturbing instances during the COVID-19 pandemic period.
“The police will tell you that there are some households in Barbados where children, during COVID, were going to school online. They’d be sitting at the dining room table in classes while [a family member] would be in front of them handling weed to sell,” he shared.
“Where does this child see his future? Does he see his future on the computer screen, or does he look beyond the screen and see what a real-life situation is?”
Marshall urged Barbadians to view crime through a wider lens, advocating for a shift beyond a narrow focus on law enforcement and judicial measures.
“We have a tremendous opportunity in Barbados to turn things around,” he said. “When we talk about the criminal justice system, we have to stop focusing so much on what the police are doing – they only get called after the crime has been committed – and what the government is doing. We have provided more resources to the police than ever before; they’ve been trained far better than they have ever been.”
The Attorney General asserted that every “predictable, logical” measure required of the government has been taken, “and yet we see the [crime] situation continuing”.
“We’ve covered off the police, we’ve covered off the court system, we have increased the number of prosecutors. The government has been checking off those boxes that can easily be measured,” he said.
Reflecting on community institutions of the past, including Sunday school, which helped instil discipline in young people, Marshall stressed that these unquantifiable qualities were vital to building a safer society.
“There is no statistic in the world that can measure respect or what would cause a young boy to be disrespectful,” he said while acknowledging the value of research in developing “solid solutions”.
“The next conversation that we need to have is those things that are hard to measure…. I’m grateful for the research and hope that coming out of the deliberations we will be able to put some solid solutions on the table. But there’s a point that we’re missing, and those are the things we can’t measure. And if we can’t measure them, then implementing them becomes so much harder,” the attorney general added.
