A comprehensive crime strategy is needed

guyana chronicle editoral

CRIME continues to escalate in our country. Not a day passes without reports of some high-profile robbery or related crimes. For a small society, the volume of crime is too high. We have been told over and over again that the situation would soon be brought under control, but things have become worse. We have had a change of Government, but the situation has not changed.There comes a time when the society loses confidence in the relevant authorities to protect them. We hope we are not headed there. The Minister of Public Security had said that with the passage of the budget, more resources for crime-fighting would become available. The budget has been passed, so we now await some action in this regard. But even as we do so, it must be emphasised that the nature, level and frequency of criminal activities would need more than routine policing or enhanced police capacity. There has to be both a short and a long-term strategy to combat and contain crime. We had hoped that the meeting of the top security officials and the President a few weeks ago would have yielded such a strategy. If it did, it’s not evident. We believe the time has come for more than just a meeting of the officials. There is need for interventions at multiple levels. First, there should be community assemblies on the crime situation, whereby representatives of both the uniformed and civilian security apparatus meet with citizens at that level to hear from them firsthand. Such assemblies would serve the purposes of both fact-finding and confidence-boosting. There is no substitute for direct democracy in a situation of crisis. Second, there should be a series of national conferences on crime which bring together decision makers, legal minds, scholars, criminologists, other relevant experts and perhaps some relevant agencies of the security forces to get to the root of the problem and to come up with recommendations for both short and long-term solutions. The value of such an approach is its recognition that criminal activity is the outcome of larger and deeper social problems. We continue to believe that, ultimately, reduction in crime cannot be achieved outside of broader social reforms, including an overhaul of the education system. Third, our political leadership needs to recognise that the crime situation has reached a critical point that cannot be salvaged in an atmosphere of partisan competition on the subject. It does not inspire confidence when our Opposition politicians and their media outlets use the daily orgy of crimes as a means of scoring political points against their opponents. It is disgusting. Making political hay while ordinary citizens are being robbed, injured and killed daily is far from political enlightenment. It is high time the President invite the Opposition to be part of the solution; they are part of Government too. Finally, we urge citizens to make demands on both the executive and the Parliament to act now. None of our leaders should be spared. Working people have to contend with the daily challenges of economic want and, therefore, could ill-afford the added stress of dealing with crime. The business class will not invest more if their investments are mere sitting ducks for criminals. This class has to be part of the solution too. In the last analysis, we want action to stop this madness. But we warn against reckless policing; it has been tried before with disastrous consequences. That is never the answer. Surely, if the entire society confronts this problem with the degree of responsibility and urgency that is required, we can pull things back from the edge.