A severed head on a bar table. Two cousins bound with barbed wire, bodies burnt in a car trunk. It has been a bad year. The daily body-count is on track so far to match 2010. Only 2008 and 2009 were worse.Bodies in the Beetham make the papers here. Bodies in Bogota don't. But the wave of violent crime is not just a T&T problem. Last year, six countries in the English-speaking Caribbean had a higher murder rate than ours. In the Hispanic Caribbean, five scored worse.
So–nothing for us to feel bad about? You can get shot anywhere? Just sit back and suffer? No. Some countries have done a whole lot better.In the Americas, Canada, Chile and Argentina are around ten times as safe as T&T. Worldwide, China, Japan, India, most of the Middle East and most of Europe have murder rates lower than four per 100,000. Japan is at 0.4, Germany at 0.8.
In the western hemisphere, 18 countries have a murder rate at or above 22 per 100,000. Bar one, all are washed by the Caribbean Sea–the sole exception is El Salvador, a short hop away on the Pacific coast of Central America. Something in the water? Probably not. But it makes sense to stand back and check for cause-and-effect at a regional level. The "where?" of the murder rate gives a few pointers about the "why?".
First of all, some non-explanations:
Concrete jungle: This isn't a big-city problem. Anguilla has just 15,000 people. With five murders last year, its per capita murder rate was higher than ours. In 2011, pretty little St Kitts-Nevis had a rate of 68 per 100,000, nastier than Jamaica's. Metropolitan Buenos Aires has almost 13 million people. It was safe enough for Pope Francis–in his days as plain Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio–to move around by bus.
Race: Hispanic Honduras and Afro-Caribbean Jamaica have high murder rates. Afro-Caribbean Barbados and Hispanic Costa Rica are less unsafe.
A weak economy: At the national level, the prosperous Bahamas and Puerto Rico are more dangerous than impoverished Haiti. In T&T, murder rates soared at a time of near-full employment. At a more local level, poverty and relative deprivation may well be part of the mix–life in crime hotspots like West Kingston or Belize City's South Side is no picnic.
Death penalty: Argentina and Suriname, which abolished the death penalty years ago, are among the safest countries in the western hemisphere. Canada, with no death penalty, is safer than the US. St Kitts still hangs people, most recently in December 2008. Everywhere, murderers court death–from revenge hits, not the noose. Violent criminals are not risk-averse.
And the politicians? That's a yes-and-no. Bullets fly in Jamaica whether it's Bruce or Portia in power. If there was a quick fix, someone would have tried it. Blaming your opponents at election time is a tempting tactic–and one which backfires when you snatch the poisoned chalice.
Besides blue waters and sand, the Caribbean has drug routes. Drugs clearly aren't the only push behind the murder rate–but equally clearly, there is a link. The drug trade brings in guns. It feeds low-level street gangs and glitzy white-collar cartels. It corrupts police, judiciary and the political system, infiltrates banking and the business sector.
Politicians do bear responsibility. Long-term neglect of the police and judiciary by successive governments causes lasting damage. So does a blind-eye to corruption. Politicians think week-to-week. The hard slog of reform makes dangerous enemies.
Reform pays off, but in years and decades, not weeks and months–and probably after the next election. Costa Rica and Barbados have held their institutions together better than some of their neighbours, but they, too, have an imperfect record. The "war on drugs" may be unwinnable–but the worst tactic is to pretend there's a short-cut solution to violent crime.
Caricom murder rates
Murders per 100k population
Belize 46
Jamaica 40
St Kitts-Nevis 36
Bahamas 33
Anguilla 33
Trinidad & Tobago 29
St Lucia 26
St Vincent (2011) 24
Dominica (2010) 22
Guyana 18
Grenada (2010) 12
Antigua 12
Barbados 8
Haiti 7
BVI 7
Suriname 5
Cayman Islands 2
Source: Media reports, police stats
Year 2012 except where stated
Murder ratesin the americas
Murders per 100k population
Honduras 92
El Salvador 69
Venezuela 45
Guatemala 39
Colombia 31
Trinidad & Tobago 29
Puerto Rico 26
Dom Rep 25
Mexico 24
Panama 22
Brazil 21
Ecuador 18
Nicaragua 13
French Guiana 13
Peru 10
Costa Rica 10
Bolivia 9
Uruguay 6
USA 5
Cuba 5
Chile 4
Argentina 3
Canada 2
Source: UNODC
Latest year (most are 2010 or 2011)
