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Let’s talk about crime in this country

Feb 23, 2012 Letters

 

 

Dear Editor,
Any poor society will have crime. It is just the way it is. Poverty and crime will go hand in hand. This means crime has always been a feature of Guyanese society. However, the story of crime is more complex than a linkage to poverty.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, Guyana was one of the most prosperous societies in terms of rankings per capita GDP. Now, that wealth was like today concentrated in the hands of a few but Guyana had a middle class in the 1950s and 1960s.
This partially explains why crime levels and incidence rates were significantly lower in the 1950s and 1960s compared to the 1970s onwards.
Another explanation for lower crime was the operation of a professional, qualified, well-paid and well-trained British-administered police force. Then came Forbes Burnham and the PNC and the sewage they left this country in after 28 years.
Poverty skyrocketed under the PNC as economic dereliction took over Guyana. With poverty arrived loss of human dignity as good men and women started doing terrible things to survive.
This was the backdrop to which the PPP came to power in 1992. Although Hoyte started serious economic reforms in 1985, which the PPP benefited from, the damage was already done. The criminal mindset had already consumed the society.
What the PPP did was to enlarge the opportunity for criminality, wrongdoing, immorality and illegality. With more revenues in the system and more wealth created through the free market system, crime magnified under the PPP.
Organized crime which was small under the PNC became a powerhouse under the PPP with drug cartel bosses even doing crime fighting for the regime.
This is a fundamental difference between the PPP and the PNC. There was no difference between legal and illegal growth under the PPP. On the other hand, the PNC never allowed cocaine cartels to operate with impunity despite the staggering profits cocaine cartels earned in the late 1970s and 1980s due to lax Western prevention systems.
The scale of crime has become nightmarish under the PPP. The increase of wealth under the PPP did not reduce crime. It expanded crime largely because it came from crime.
An entire society driven by a learned criminal mindset, a survivalist psyche and a morally compromised outlook suddenly found itself with wealth or the opportunity to create wealth.
What happened is that the majority of the wealth creators decided to embrace illegality to create wealth. Even the ones who genuinely created wealth bent the laws, bribed and corrupted officials and engaged in other forms of illegal behaviour to create that wealth.
Economic improvement and the reduction of poverty did not bring less crime under the PPP. It brought more crime largely because the PPP enabled crime to flourish.
The PPP’s practice of marginalisation and inequality by taking taxes from all races and political supporters and handing it to select friends and cronies in the form of massive contracts has created gross inequality.
The punishing poor see the meteoric rise of many by crime and wrongdoing and believe it is the only salvation to change their fortunes. They go out, buy a gun and try to make millions in a single night.
The criminally inclined, and there are many, know they can commit crimes with impunity under the PPP. It will not change until and unless the system is radically changed and harsh penalties are in place to confront this entrenched mindset in Guyanese society.
This is a battle against minds. Even if we find all the oil in the world, it will not change. We will have more criminals killing, kidnapping, robbing, corrupting, stealing our taxes, taking kickbacks from contracts, etc.
We have had 48 years of conduct that has not only blurred but erased the line between right and wrong. Someone new is needed to change the system and to lead this country to its promise.
M. Maxwell

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