Fabi­an Pierre

Seep­er­sad: Broad­er ap­proach to crime need­ed

For Dr Randy Seep­er­sad, head of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies' (UWI) crim­i­nol­o­gy de­part­ment, the 2,500 new guns for po­lice of­fi­cers is not the an­swer.In a phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Seep­er­sad said po­lice of­fi­cers al­ready have weapons.He was not cer­tain if the min­is­ter was bring­ing in the ex­tra weapon­ry to cor­re­spond with an in­crease in the po­lice force, but said the Gov­ern­ment was tak­ing a sup­pres­sive ap­proach to crime.

"They see crime as law en­force­ment. That is an im­por­tant per­spec­tive but it is lim­it­ed. They need to look at crime and the caus­es of crime from a broad­er per­spec­tive," he said.He said the so­ci­etal and pre­ven­ta­tive as­pects of crime were need­ed.

Mar­shall: Be care­ful guns don'tget in­to the wrong hands

So­ci­ol­o­gist and se­nior lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Dr Ronald Mar­shall is warn­ing Gov­ern­ment about the re­cent or­der for 2,500 more guns."We need to be care­ful about this you know, be­cause we al­ready have too many guns that are sup­posed to be in law en­force­ment hands...we need to be care­ful of it en­ter­ing pri­vate hands."

Mar­shall be­lieves that the prop­er reg­u­la­tions, checks and bal­ances are not in place and can on­ly add fu­el to a sit­u­a­tion al­ready spi­ralling out of con­trol."More guns is not the an­swer...The big­ger ques­tion be­comes what are we do­ing with all this in­tel­li­gence in­for­ma­tion we have?"What is the end prod­uct of all these in­tel­li­gence in­for­ma­tion if they are not be­ing used? How is it that with all this hi-tech equip­ment that has been im­port­ed and is be­ing used from the first world coun­tries that the ban­dits are one step ahead of the po­lice?"

Cum­mings: Mul­ti­fac­eted ap­proach need­ed

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Re­nee Cum­mings al­so agreed that more guns was not the an­swer.In an e-mailed re­sponse yes­ter­day, Cum­mings said a mul­ti­di­men­sion­al and mul­ti­fac­eted ap­proach was need­ed."Gov­ern­ment must se­cure pub­lic buy-in and en­roll the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in its ef­forts to re­duce crime and vi­o­lence. Along with en­force­ment strate­gies, we need to see more com­mu­ni­ty-based, non-en­force­ment vi­o­lence pre­ven­tion strate­gies that com­bine to cre­ate a com­pre­hen­sive homi­cide re­duc­tion ini­tia­tive," she said.

She said the na­ture of crime had changed and that the psy­chol­o­gy of groups prone to lethal vi­o­lence need­ed to change.Cum­mings said a new crime fight­ing par­a­digm of in­no­v­a­tive homi­cide pre­ven­tion and in­ter­ven­tion strate­gies was al­so need­ed.The plans, she said, should use strate­gic prob­lem analy­sis to bet­ter un­der­stand the na­ture of homi­cide and de­sign ac­tion­able poli­cies that make com­mu­ni­ties more re­sis­tant and re­silient to crime and vi­o­lence.