Crime and poverty

Oct 14, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Amid all the talk of progress and development in Guyana crime and poverty remain at the topic of the list of the concerns of citizens. Crime has even at times trumped citizens’ worries about skyrocketing food prices.
In public discussions about how to deal with this violence, there are usually two opposing views. The first is the traditional “tough guy”, law enforcement approach, which says crime is caused by criminals and the only way to eliminate crime is to deploy aggressive enforcement policies and to dissuade or debilitate criminals through imprisonment.

Then there is what can be labelled the “social rehabilitation response” to violent crime. This approach tends to view crime as caused by societal ills and looks to deal with crime by remedying these ills through social programmes. Proponents of this approach maintain that you can never deal with violent crime by suppression – you have to attack its “systemic causes”

One would hope that all interested parties – meaning the entire Guyanese public – would reasonably conclude that a combined approach might be the best way to go. We have to agree that a forceful response to the escalating and entrenched crime menace has to be taken even while we take steps to ensure that more youths from the present generation do not drift into a life of crime.

However, when we look at those neighbourhoods where a criminal culture has taken over it is extremely difficult for even well-meaning social programmes to take root, much less succeed. The criminal culture makes youths scoff at the values of the rest of society and the cricket/football clubs, libraries, drama clubs etc. that were expected to turn the tide, soon fall into disrepair and ruin through non-participation.

Efforts to deal with underlying social maladies will be strangled by crime and its culture and its adherents. A strong crime elimination programme must spearhead any effort to rehabilitate any crime-ridden location if there is to be any hope of success. It was once an article of faith that poverty causes crime, but today we have to concede that crime is causing poverty. Look at some of the villages and city wards that have been overrun by crime and criminals.

Businesses are driven from crime-ridden neighbourhoods, taking jobs and opportunities with them. Some have even been murdered; potential investors and would-be employers are scared away. Existing owners are dissuaded from making improvements on their property, and as property values go down, owners disinvest in their property. A vicious circle is formed: as the businesses leave, there are fewer jobs for the youths and a life of crime becomes attractive even to those who may have wanted to tread the “straight and narrow”. The nadir is reached when the village or neighbourhood acquires such a reputation that even businesses from other locations balk at employing residents from that area.

But what do we do on the law enforcement side to suppress violent crime? How do we actually make reductions in violent crime? We have all been regaled by statistics to show reduction in certain crimes and also statistics by governments to show how the spending on the forces has escalated over the last decade. We believe that this is a fruitless debate: while all Police Forces must be adequately funded, crime has never been reduced by throwing money at it. We have also been informed in the press that our Police Force has been augmented in its transportation and that efforts are underway to procure helicopters, strengthen forensics, intelligence, weaponry and specially trained personnel.

But with all of this, the crime fighting effort must have some strategy behind it. The evidence is incontrovertible that the vast majority of violent crimes are committed by a very small group of chronic offenders. This tiny fraction of incorrigible, habitual offenders is responsible for hundreds and hundreds of crimes each while they are out on the street. If we are to make a dent in suppressing the crime wave washing over us for the last decade we must make it our primary goal to identify, to target, and to incarcerate this hard-core element of chronic offenders. It will not be easy but it is the only way to go: intelligence will be the key.

approach, causing poverty, neighbourhoods, programmes, suppression

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Crime and poverty

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