UNEMPLOYMENT IS NO EXCUSE FOR CRIME

Dec 21, 2013 Peeping Tom

Elements aligned or sympathetic to the opposition are never to be found wanting when it comes to making doomsday predictions about the future of Guyana. The usual refrain is that Guyana is about to become a State-less society or that the country is on the precipice of great disaster.
There was even the time when it was said that the private banks would soon become the largest property owners because the foreclosure of hundreds of businesses was imminent. That never happened.
Then during the crime wave it was suggested that the State was becoming so criminalized that law and order would be outlawed as a result of the breakdown in security. This collapse also never materialized. In fact the criminal gangs were routed.
The economy, far from eviscerating, continues to improve, something that is not happening in many places of the world. People can still walk the streets and their communities in relative freedom.
Yet despite this, the doomsday scenarios continue to be painted. The latest doomsday warning came recently in the form of a letter to the newspapers. It signaled that Guyana was falling apart. And what were the premises of this diagnosis?
Well according to the authors, Guyana is falling apart because the crime rate has worsened. A frightening example of this deteriorating situation was the rise in the number of women killed by their spouses. Then the argument went on to blame the overall rise in crime to the fact that young men are unemployed.
These arguments need to be dissected. It is true that there has been an increase in the crime rate. But the crime rate today pales in comparison to what existed during the period 2001- 2006 when criminal gangs spread fear and terror throughout the society.
During that rampage, Guyana did not collapse. If Guyana did not collapse then, it is not likely to do so now. Therefore the argument that the spike in crime is symptomatic of a collapsing society itself collapses on the weight of previous experience.
Secondly, the number of women who have died at the hands of their spouses remains a telling statistic, no nexus has been established to show how the deaths of these women will trigger or has triggered the collapse of Guyana.
To compound the flaws in the argument, the authors go on to argue that it is the lack of employment of young men that is responsible for the increase in the crime rate. But if those making this argument had studied the cases of the seventeen women who had died at the hands of their spouses, they would have recognized that lack employment was not a major contributing factor in these deaths.
In fact, in very few of the cases of domestic violence fatalities were joblessness the main contributing factor. The main factor responsible for the altercations that led to violence that resulted in deaths in these seventeen cases was suspicion of infidelity.
The excuse about unemployment being responsible for an increase in crime has long lost its currency not just in Guyana but also internationally. At best, there is correlation between crime and unemployment but this correlation is not strong enough to establish causation at a general level.
There may be cases in which persons have been pushed into crime because of their economic circumstances, including their failure to hold down a job but there are by far too many cases in which persons are unemployed and not taken to crime. As such unemployment cannot be treated as a causative factor for crime, and it should not be made into an excuse for criminal activity.
This excuse acts as a justification for elements that opt out of honest work and instead seek employment in criminal enterprises. As long as these persons are able to avoid being caught and prosecuted for criminal activity, there will be the incentive to continue to commit crimes. The greatest disincentive to crime is not jobs but it is the likelihood of being caught and subject to lawful punishment.
A stronger argument therefore would be that the increase in crime is a reflection of a downgrading of security within the society or the failure of the security services to increase the likelihood of persons engaged in crime being caught.
Excuses about unemployment will not aid in that process. On the contrary such excuses can serve as a justification for those who intend to make their living from robbing cheating and fleecing hardworking and innocent people.

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