UWI’s Vice Chancellor Urges Studies Into Causes Of Crime In Caribbean

By Tony Best

With crime rates escalating in several Caribbean nations there is pressing need to look into the causes of criminal behavior and the role of young men in the Caribbean.
The call for more research has come from Prof. Nigel Harris, Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies. He told the Carib News that it wasn’t enough for Caribbean states to look at how other countries were trying to keep young men in school and also how others were tackling their crime problems.

 Instead, he said, the Caribbean should be conducting more of its own research to find out why the incidence of crime was on the rise. At the same time, studies were needed to determine why so many young men were dropping out of the school systems and eventually turning to a life of crime.

We ourselves need to do studies within our own communities to understand some of what was happening, was the way he put it. I don’t want to link males to crime but in truth I believe that the young men who drop out of the system are more likely to be involved in crime.

So, the whole issue of keeping males within the system, that research and looking at models to keep males in the system were very important.

Prof. Harris who was careful not to pinpoint any particular country and the upsurge in crime said the issue of poverty and its reduction was also ripe for research and he believed the UWI was well placed to conduct some of the studies while providing training in criminology and related areas to fight crime and the perpetrators.

Already, he said, some funds were coming into the University from outside the region to help boost the work of its special institute on crime so it could train more people and help, in terms of research, understanding some of the causes of crime, post graduate research and how one would alleviate and help reduce crime.

What was really needed, Prof. Harris asserted, was financial help to allow the region’s criminologists and other social scientists to undertake in-depth research into crime and to look at the various strategies, some of which had worked elsewhere, meaning outside of the Caribbean.

You want to be able to have people with the time, freedom and ability to look the world-over, he said. There are programs, some have worked, some don’t work and to be able to determine the applicability to the Caribbean of those that work.

 The Vice Chancellor said that such UWI research could help pinpoint solutions and can make a difference to the Caribbean.

The issue of crime in the Caribbean was placed on the front burner in New York recently when Bruce Golding, Jamaica’s Prime Minister, came to the City for his first official visit since assuming office last year. He told two separate audiences in the City that we have a major crime problem in Jamaica and we are working on it.

Fighting crime, he added, was a top priority for his Administration.

We have a serious crime problem, he said to luncheon guests of the Jamaican American Chamber of Commerce in Manhattan. There are some folks back home who say when you go abroad don’t talk about it. I take a different view. One of the things we must do is to make the world understand that we come straight to you.

More than 1,000 persons were murdered in Jamaica during the first nine months of the year. In Trinidad and Tobago, the homicides have surpassed 200 and in the Bahamas they are nearing record levels. Several Eastern Caribbean countries have also reported spikes in murders, robberies, rapes and other serious criminal offences.  Guyana recorded a number of massacres earlier this year in which at least 20 persons were slaughtered.

Golding said that his government was seeking to enact tough anti-crime bills that would give the Police some real effective powers. We are going to get tough. Marauding gunmen are going to have to be told that while we respect your human rights we are going to respect and protect those rights while we have you locked up behind bars. We are not allowing you to roam up and down the street.

Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, St. Vincent’s Prime Minister, said that although Jamaica wanted to recruit highly trained Vincentian nurses, the health care professionals were shying away going to Jamaica because of the crime situation there. On the other hand, they had gone to Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and Aruba.

 

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