4 days Ago
Trinidad and Tobago is a nation gripped by fear. This is the starkest finding in a survey by the Police Service Commission (PolSC), which laid its 2023 annual report in Parliament last Friday. According to the survey, half of respondents are afraid to be out in their neighbourhood during the day, and 74% when out at night.
Even in their homes, 82% are fearful about bandits breaking in, and 85% worry that their friends and relatives will become victims of crime. Opinion polls conducted over 20 years ago by Market Opinion and Research International (MORI) for the government found that, in 2002, crime was the most important issue for 56% of respondents. By 2003, however, 92% put crime as their primary concern.
That was the same year when, according to figures from the Central Statistical Office (CSO), the homicide rate rose from 101 murders in 1997 to 229 killings in 2003 and the detection rate dropped from 76% to 40%. Last year, according to figures from the Crime and Problem Analysis (CAPA) branch of the Police Service, 577 people were murdered in T&T. It is thus unsurprising that the PSC survey found that 65% of respondents are dissatisfied with the police, with just 11% having a positive view.
Citizens have long complained about the slow response time of police, corrupt officers, and lack of accountability for police killings. The MORI figures also show that successive administrations have been aware of these trends for over two decades and failed to take effective action. In this regard, the words of Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley are instructive.
“Today we are being told ‘citizens, don’t worry, it is gang people killing one another, that is not real murder’,” he said. “So, we are now disaggregating the problem into acceptable parts and unacceptable parts. We call that failure.
” However, that was his perspective in 2014 when he was Opposition Leader. In 2024 as Prime Minister, Dr Rowley has asserted that crime is mainly due to some people’s bad choices. “It’s done on the basis of whether there are benefits to be had by the perpetrators,” he said.
He has also argued that the Government had “no control over this sort of criminal conduct. We can only respond to them after they have done it.” So, while ten years ago he blamed a UNC administration for the high homicide rate, Dr Rowley now holds that a PNM regime bears no responsibility for crime.
However, if Government policies do not affect crime rates, Dr Rowley should explain why murders started spiking in 2003 and why crime hotspots are disproportionately located in constituencies controlled by the PNM. No country lowers crime solely by action after the fact. Instead, effective policies remove incentives for people to break the law.
The country’s crime rate has spiralled in part because the Government has been reactive rather than proactive. The lack of confidence in the police revealed in the PSC survey is an effect of uncontrolled crime, not the cause..
