Mark Wil­son

Let's start with the num­bers:

T&T:

�2 403 mur­ders last year

�2 Down one per cent from2013

�2 Mur­der rate: 30 per 100,000

�2 World rank­ing: 13

�2 Clear-up rate 15 per cent(Jan to June)

�2 Killed by po­lice: 46, or 3.4per 100,000

Ja­maica:

�2 1,005 mur­ders last year

�2 Down 16 per cent from 2013

�2 Mur­der rate: 37 per 100,000

�2 World rank­ing: eight

�2 Clear-up rate 37 per cent(full year)

�2 Killed by po­lice: 109, or 4.0per 100,000

We're still slight­ly bet­ter than Ja­maica–but the gap is nar­row­ing. Back in 1977 Ja­maica's mur­der rate was five times T&T's. In 2007 it was dou­ble. Now it is just 23 per cent high­er. Of the 23 coun­tries world­wide with a mur­der rate worse than 20 per 100,000, 17 are in the Eng­lish-speak­ing or His­pan­ic Caribbean. That's a quick count based on da­ta for the most re­cent year to hand–so, 2014 for some of the Caribbean coun­tries and 2012 or a lit­tle ear­li­er, where I've used the UN stats.

And here's the 2014 sto­ry for some Cari­com coun­tries. Mur­ders Rate per 2014 100,000 St Kitts-Nevis 24 44 Be­lize 124 37 Ba­hamas 122 32 Guyana 147 20 St Lu­cia 34 19 Bar­ba­dos 23 8 OK, not so nice. And what, pre­cise­ly, should we do about it? Top pri­or­i­ty–stop look­ing for in­stant an­swers. In op­po­si­tion be­fore 2010, the UNC un­der­stand­ably railed against the high mur­der rate. Re­mem­ber those cam­paign ads? The Gov­ern­ment was told to "do some­thing."

From the end of 2001 to May 2010, with Patrick Man­ning as prime min­is­ter, the month­ly mur­der rate av­er­aged 30.5– around one a day. From June 2010 to De­cem­ber 2014, with Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as prime min­is­ter, the month­ly mur­der rate av­er­aged 32.7. Those num­bers mask year-toyear vari­a­tion. The mur­der rate rose fast in 2001, when Bas­deo Pan­day was per­son­al­ly re­spon­si­ble for the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­istry. It moved on up un­til 2009, then came down slight­ly.

There was a low point in 2011– our emer­gency year. Since then, the mur­der rate has crept back up. Caribbean-wide, the sen­si­ble an­swers are all long, hard-slog. Po­lice re­form. Ju­di­cial re­form, to cut back those mul­ti-year tri­al de­lays. Bor­der con­trols to re­duce the gun and drug flow (off­shore pa­trol ves­sels, any­one?). And a crack­down on cor­rupt of­fi­cials.

It would help to re­form and hu­man­ise the pris­ons, with more young in­mates tak­ing CSECs and job train­ing, in place of an in­ten­sive BSc in Bru­tal­i­ty and Gang Mem­ber­ship Stud­ies. Progress is painful­ly slow. Re­forms take years to im­ple­ment, and decades to bring re­sults. Re­al progress means tak­ing on es­tab­lished in­ter­ests– po­lice, lawyers, cor­rupt of­fi­cials, that sort of stuff. Politi­cians want in­stant an­swers.

That means glitzy hard­ware. And hang­ing. Ex­cept, hang­ing is ob­vi­ous­ly not an an­swer to any­thing–as most Cab­i­net min­is­ters are bright enough to know, and as some read­i­ly ad­mit when chat­ting pri­vate­ly. For starters, the de­tec­tion rate for gang-re­lat­ed gun crimes is painful­ly low. When killers do get caught, it's of­ten a do­mes­tic vi­o­lence case with an eas­i­ly tracked cul­prit. Gang­sters are not risk-averse. That's why they do crime rather than ac­coun­tan­cy.

They are not de­terred by re­tal­i­a­tion from gang­land ri­vals. They are not de­terred by gun bat­tles with the po­lice. So they won't be de­terred by the van­ish­ing­ly small risk of be­ing tracked down, ar­rest­ed, put on tri­al, found guilty, then los­ing a lo­cal ap­peal and los­ing again in the Privy Coun­cil. Back to Ja­maica. Mur­ders are down. But the big drop last year was in po­lice killings. There were 109. That is down from 236 in 2013. From 2006 to 2013, there was an an­nu­al av­er­age of 239 Ja­maican po­lice killings.

That was a per capi­ta rate of 8.7 per 100,000 pop­u­la­tion–high­er than the over­all mur­der rate for Bar­ba­dos. On­ly 66 coun­tries world­wide have a mur­der rate high­er than eight per 100,000. The per capi­ta rate for po­lice killings in the US is 0.1 per 100,000 on the FBI es­ti­mate, and 0.35 based on fig­ures from the "Killed by Po­lice" un­of­fi­cial mon­i­tors.

Fer­gu­son notwith­stand­ing. If you're a young black man who wants to get shot by po­lice, go to Ja­maica. In March and April, Ja­maica's In­de­pen­dent Com­mis­sion of In­ves­ti­ga­tions charged eight po­lice of­fi­cers from the rur­al parish of Claren­don with mur­der.

Up to 40 re­lat­ed killings were in­ves­ti­gat­ed. Many of them had been pre­vi­ous­ly record­ed as gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders. Since then, po­lice killings have nose­dived. More gen­er­al­ly, the num­ber of gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders of­fi­cial­ly record­ed by Ja­maica's po­lice was down by 36 per cent last year. Makes you think?