KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

With es­ca­lat­ing gang vi­o­lence and a Gen Z pop­u­la­tion seek­ing quick and easy cash, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad says there is a crit­i­cal need for crim­i­nal jus­tice re­form in T&T.

Ad­dress­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ (UWI) Crime Sym­po­sium, ti­tled Sim­u­lat­ing So­lu­tions: Com­bat­ing Crime and Crim­i­nal­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go, Ram­per­sad yes­ter­day said Gov­ern­ment must bring ro­bust leg­is­la­tion. She al­so said while there is leg­is­la­tion to help fight crime, there is in­ad­e­quate en­force­ment.

With job­less­ness and job sat­is­fac­tion con­cerns, Ram­per­sad re­vealed is­sues in the ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem which lead to some of the is­sues.

Ram­per­sad said the Gen Z cul­ture pro­duces en­ti­tled, un­car­ing and self­ish be­hav­iours. She said even at UWI, some stu­dents are not read­ing or watch­ing tele­vi­sion and are un­aware of cur­rent af­fairs or what to do for ex­ams. In­stead, she claimed they spent most of their time on their phones, some even en­gag­ing in pornog­ra­phy.

Ram­per­sad, head of UWI’s De­part­ment of Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence, co-au­thored the No Time to Quit: En­gag­ing Youth at Risk Ex­ec­u­tive Re­port of the Com­mit­tee on Young Males and Crime in T&T in 2014.

While the re­port reached Par­lia­ment, she said is­sues raised in the re­port are es­ca­lat­ing while the so­lu­tions re­main the same. She claimed sev­er­al glob­al agen­cies iden­ti­fied T&T as hav­ing the sixth-worst crime rate, sur­pass­ing Ja­maica, which was bad­ly af­fect­ed by crime. Ram­per­sad said T&T could learn from Ja­maica, where the gov­ern­ment took a ro­bust ap­proach to al­le­vi­ate crime as it was a tourist econ­o­my.

She quot­ed sta­tis­tics from the TTPS for this coun­try which showed there were 30,640 crimes be­tween 2015 to 2022, buoyed by mur­der tolls of 605 in 2022 and 555 in 2023.

Not­ing that Prof Sel­wyn Ryan’s re­port showed that co­caine did not orig­i­nate in the Caribbean, as it does not have the cli­mate to grow co­ca plants, she re­called that South­ern Di­vi­sion po­lice found $186 mil­lion in co­caine in Ce­dros a few weeks ago. Ram­per­sad said au­thor­i­ties usu­al­ly find ship­ments in homes, ship­ping con­tain­ers and on shores.

“The drug busi­ness is big mon­ey. We must un­der­stand the lure. Drug mon­ey has an es­ti­mat­ed val­ue of US$650 bil­lion, 30 per cent of the over­all glob­al il­lic­it econ­o­my. It al­so links to oth­er crimes such as mon­ey laun­der­ing and ter­ror fi­nanc­ing,” Ram­per­sad said.

She not­ed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s con­cern that cit­i­zens were turn­ing a blind eye to crime, as some are too fear­ful to re­port them to au­thor­i­ties. She said some crim­i­nals re­ceive bail and re­turn to so­ci­ety to kill wit­ness­es, while youths are now form­ing gangs and en­gag­ing in mass mur­ders to pro­tect their turfs. Ram­per­sad ex­plained that many gang mem­bers grew up in homes with­out pos­i­tive male role mod­els and even wished to harm their fa­thers for pau­peris­ing their fam­i­lies.

She ex­plained that this wave of gang­ster­ism has links to vi­o­lence, sex crimes, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, and mal­treat­ment of chil­dren by par­ents. She said cit­i­zens suf­fer from drug ad­dic­tion, drug-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence, and cor­rup­tion in law en­force­ment and pub­lic of­fi­cials. While transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime groups dom­i­nate this il­lic­it in­dus­try, she said vul­ner­a­ble youths ex­e­cute the op­er­a­tions.

Not­ing that Ryan in­ter­viewed gang mem­bers, in­clud­ing some in prison, Ram­per­sad said, “One com­plained that these days, your fa­ther is your moth­er’s lat­est boyfriend and usu­al­ly, your moth­er is switch­ing boyfriends every oth­er month. Some young peo­ple even want to kill or maim their fa­thers for leav­ing them to pro­vide for them­selves, their sib­lings and ma­ma. They of­ten have to wit­ness their moth­ers or sis­ters hav­ing se­r­i­al sex­u­al re­la­tion­ships in or­der to earn a liv­ing and sur­vive. It is well-known that moth­ers farm out their daugh­ters to men, who pro­vide mon­ey in re­turn. Sex is a valu­able com­mod­i­ty or cur­ren­cy.”

Ram­per­sad said small­er ban­dit gangs are de­vel­op­ing to com­mit rob­beries and mur­ders, tar­get­ing busi­ness­men, old­er cit­i­zens, and ve­hi­cle own­ers.

Re­spond­ing to Row­ley’s com­ment that there was al­so State con­tri­bu­tion to crime, Ram­per­sad said there are al­so re­ports of crim­i­nals dressed as po­lice of­fi­cers, while some of­fi­cers al­so en­gage in crime. She said some crime is­sues are linked to the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, not­ing es­ca­lat­ing school vi­o­lence in Trinidad and its ap­pear­ance in To­ba­go.