THE TWO SIDES TO CRIME

Aug 03, 2017 Editorial, Features / Columnists

Like any other country, the growth, development and prosperity of Guyana can only effectively take place in an atmosphere of peace and stability. During the reign of the PPP government, crime and violence had gripped the nation but gone are those crime ridden days since the election of the government.
Despite the fact that crimes have reduced, the business community has affirmed that crime remains the number one problem in the country. It has affected business confidence and the economy which is currently experiencing a slow growth due to a decline in production.
Getting a firmer grip on the crime situation demands radical action in the short term, as well as medium-and long-term solutions. Governments (this and previous ones) have skirted around the root causes of crime. Crime is a two-sided problem but Governments have the tendency to give more attention to one side of the problem and ignore or downplay the other side.
Crime can be solved by confronting and attacking it from the root causes. It will not be solved by having more police, imposing stiffer penalties or longer sentences. Youths in general believe that the police are often meaningless since many end up on the wrong side of the law. Those who become corrupt affect the kind of view that the police need in the society.
For the greater part, many young people see the police as the problem because they represent the state and act as the defenders of the rest of society against them. Hence, they conclude that society is against them. Yet this is no reason for these young people to gravitate to a life of crime. They may be recalcitrant but not necessarily criminal-minded.
But there is peer pressure that leads to the gang culture. The majority of the crimes are perpetrated by youths in the 15 to 29 age group most of whom are unemployed and are struggling to put food on the table. Until recently the poor and hopeless were seen as the ones posing the greatest threat to society. That is not always the case.
With this is the reality that the government should not use one side of the problem to solve the other side of the problem. Problem cannot solve problem. The offshoot of the problem is that the police would mete out violence to the suspected perpetrator of crime. This in turn sparks retaliation and the vicious cycle develops. If allowed to continue then we return to the days of the 2002-2008 crime wave when people in the Guyana Police Force were afraid to wear their uniforms. The victims of the police brutality were retaliating. The culture of the police radically changed.
The government must confront and deal with the root cause of the crime; it must now once more confront the young who are challenging the establishment. It is one thing to say that these errant young people pose the highest level of risk to society; that the root causes of crime are our youths, many of whom are illiterate, jobless, hopeless and desperate.
However, it is becoming clear that the absence of proper parenting and the discipline that the community once imposed are the root causes. Youths must be challenged to work and to become productive and decent citizens in society.
We must place them in a positive environment and engage them with programmes that would morally and socially give them the opportunity to earn and to feel valued without their guns. This will cost less than imprisonment.
We must help them to understand how they can contribute to building a better Guyana, the land we love, while fulfilling their own dreams to be prosperous.