KALI­FA SARAH CLYNE

Can­cel Car­ni­val.

These words might be con­sid­ered near-blas­phe­mous by the thou­sands of peo­ple who take part in or ben­e­fit from the na­tion­al fes­ti­val.

But in re­cent weeks, there have been re­peat­ed calls to can­cel it.

Most of these calls are the re­sult of a quick­ly es­ca­lat­ing mur­der rate, which seemed to spi­ral out of con­trol at the be­gin­ning of the year, with 26 mur­ders record­ed by the 14th day in the new year.

But is can­celling Car­ni­val a rea­son­able tac­tic for deal­ing with crime? And could can­celling a fes­ti­val that hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple de­pend on for dif­fer­ent needs pos­si­bly cause more harm than good?

Car­ni­val has been a part of the fab­ric of this coun­try for more than 100 years, and many peo­ple be­lieve it has unit­ed races, class­es and over­come even lan­guage bar­ri­ers be­cause of its in­clu­siv­i­ty.

In 2011, chair­man of the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion Ken­ny De Sil­va es­ti­mat­ed that a min­i­mum of 120,000 peo­ple played mas. Since then dozens of new mas bands have made en­tries in­to the fes­ti­val.

The on­ly time the fes­ti­val has ever been close to be­ing can­celled was in 1972, be­cause of a po­lio out­break. The Gov­ern­ment can­celled all pub­lic events. But the peo­ple were not hav­ing it. Can­cel Car­ni­val? Nev­er! In­stead the fes­ti­val was post­poned to the rainy month of May.

What would be the point of­can­celling the sea­son?

Peo­ple who sup­port calls for can­celling Car­ni­val ar­gue that it's an un­nec­es­sary dis­trac­tion that stops peo­ple from be­ing con­scious and sober.

Busi­ness­man Dale Ramirez post­ed on the so­cial net­work Face­book that he would scrap Car­ni­val if it meant get­ting a han­dle on the crime sit­u­a­tion.

"Our armed forces should be polic­ing the hell out of our neigh­bour­hoods not lean­ing on the scaf­fold­ing at fetes. Min­is­ters and law­men should be too busy to head to ONE fete, two fete, three fete any fete. I wel­come that!" Ramirez post­ed.

While Ramirez ad­mit­ted in a dis­cus­sion on his Face­book page that he wasn't aware of a di­rect link be­tween Car­ni­val and mur­ders, he ar­gued that a "sober so­ci­ety" had a much bet­ter chance at pin­point­ing the prob­lem and at­tack­ing it.

"I al­so see Car­ni­val as the buffer that dis­tracts the pop­u­la­tion away from the cri­sis we're in. With a Car­ni­val sea­son al­ways around the cor­ner there is no chance of a rev­o­lu­tion. No chance of our peo­ple wak­ing up and re­al­is­ing we're in the worst shape we've ever been; no chance for mean­ing­ful change."

Ramirez is not the on­ly one. Jerene Smith, a 30-year-old so­cial work­er, said she didn't un­der­stand why crim­i­nals were be­ing re­ward­ed with a Car­ni­val sea­son.

"Don't we have more im­por­tant things to wor­ry about than fete­ing? Does Gov­ern­ment even see that peo­ple are afraid to leave their homes? Threat­en­ing to bring back hang­ing is clear­ly not a de­ter­rent. Hit them where it hurts."

If can­celling Car­ni­val is a po­ten­tial mea­sure for de­creas­ing crime, then an im­por­tant ques­tion needs to be an­swered.

What is the cur­rent re­la­tion­ship be­tween crime and Car­ni­val?

Em­pir­i­cal da­ta sug­gests that in re­cent years, se­ri­ous crimes, specif­i­cal­ly mur­ders, de­crease dur­ing the month of Car­ni­val.

Sta­tis­tics from the T&T po­lice show that in 2008, when Car­ni­val was held in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary, that month had the low­est num­ber of mur­ders for the year, and record­ed less than 50 per cent of the 57 mur­ders in Ju­ly, the month with the high­est record­ed num­ber of mur­ders.

The trend re­peat­ed it­self in March of 2009 af­ter a late Feb­ru­ary Car­ni­val, and Feb­ru­ary of 2010 and 2011 al­so showed de­creas­es in mur­ders, al­though the low­est months for mur­ders in 2011 were be­tween Sep­tem­ber and No­vem­ber.

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the months of Sep­tem­ber to No­vem­ber 2011 were dur­ing the state of emer­gency which Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­clared in Au­gust that year.

Both Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith and the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams agree there are few­er mur­ders at this time of year.

"Dur­ing Car­ni­val we sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­crease the num­ber of po­lice of­fi­cers on the road," Williams said in an in­ter­view.

"We call out of­fi­cers on leave, on va­ca­tion and those who are sup­posed to be off-du­ty so that they can be present on the street to deal with the large crowds."

Williams said this was the rea­son crime seemed to de­crease dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son, and specif­i­cal­ly on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day, which fall on March 3 and 4 this year.

Grif­fith said the in­creased se­cu­ri­ty was set to in­crease even more this year as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty will en­sure im­prove­ments in crowd con­trol, aer­i­al sur­veil­lance and GPS track­ing of bands and mon­i­tor­ing of the pa­rade route, which is usu­al­ly cho­sen by the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with the po­lice.

The sug­ges­tion is that more po­lice equals less crime, and clear­ly there are more po­lice of­fi­cers on the road dur­ing Car­ni­val.

While Car­ni­val is known as a sea­son of mas and bac­cha­nal and or­gan­ised chaos, psy­chi­a­trist Var­ma Deyals­ingh, in an in­ter­view, posed the idea that the re­moval of Car­ni­val from the cal­en­dar could lead to a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent lev­el of chaos.

"There are seg­ments of so­ci­ety who be­lieve Car­ni­val is very im­por­tant, and to a ma­jor­i­ty of these peo­ple Car­ni­val rep­re­sents more than just a fes­ti­val," Deyals­ingh said.

"It is a form of re­lief for some and a time to re­ju­ve­nate for oth­ers, it is free­dom from life's mo­not­o­ny, and it is the ul­ti­mate stress re­liev­er."

Deyals­ingh said af­ter over 100 years of cel­e­brat­ing Car­ni­val, cit­i­zens were so­cial­ly cul­tured to an­tic­i­pate that this was the time to "free up."

"Peo­ple spend a year build­ing frus­tra­tions, be­ing ag­gra­vat­ed and ir­ri­tat­ed and gath­er­ing stress, and Car­ni­val, to them, is that re­lease point, to get rid of all these neg­a­tive emo­tions. What do you think would hap­pen if we took that away from them?"

Deyals­ingh said the ab­sence of Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions would cause them a neg­a­tive de­gree of dis­tress.

"This is their way of cop­ing. With­out it, we could go down a very dan­ger­ous road."

If the threat of bed­lam isn't enough to de­ter any gov­ern­ment from even think­ing of ban­ning the fes­ti­val, Deyals­ingh had one more thing to say.

"It would al­so lead to ex­treme an­ti-gov­ern­ment sen­ti­ments."