The na­tion’s crime sit­u­a­tion did not ar­rive like a thief in the night. It has af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties with “hot spots” and fam­i­lies that lost loved ones as vic­tims. Even crim­i­nals have fam­i­lies many of whom are not in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and may not be aware of their er­rant fam­i­ly mem­bers' ac­tiv­i­ties. And over­whelm­ing fear has be­gun to af­fect the na­tion­al psy­che as vi­o­lent gun crime con­tin­ues to grow with­out a sys­tem­at­ic prob­lem-solv­ing ap­proach.

What are the root caus­es or ex­pla­na­tions that would lead some to a life of crime? Can so­ci­ol­o­gy bring some un­der­stand­ing fa­cil­i­tat­ing a more in­formed ap­proach to ad­dress­ing the con­tribut­ing fac­tors? If the con­tribut­ing fac­tors can be iden­ti­fied and ad­dressed, then per­haps we can re­duce the num­ber of crim­i­nal re­cruits. More im­por­tant­ly, how do we turn those cur­rent­ly in­volved in the crim­i­nal un­der­world away from crime?

Which came first, hotspots, gov­ern­ment con­tracts or fight­ing for turf? Do these la­bels rep­re­sent a deep un­der­stand­ing of the con­texts? Do we have stud­ies on the new mul­ti-sto­ry hous­ing de­vel­op­ments built by the Gov­ern­ment since in­de­pen­dence? What is the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion of those liv­ing in these de­vel­op­ments, and are there ar­tic­u­lat­ed pro­grammes to aid the ad­just­ment to com­mu­ni­ty liv­ing? Are the pro­grammes work­ing? What im­pact has the move to these de­vel­op­ments had on com­mu­ni­ty and fam­i­ly life? Are there stud­ies of squat­ting com­mu­ni­ties which ex­ist all over Trinidad? Is the sit­u­a­tion dif­fer­ent in To­ba­go?

We know of war­ring gangs around Rose Hill RC. Did the gang mem­bers grow up in the com­mu­ni­ty? Are they from oth­er com­mu­ni­ties or is­lands? Are they first or sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion? What schools did they at­tend? What con­text gen­er­at­ed this phe­nom­e­non? These are valu­able in­sights that must be ob­tained if one is to un­der­stand the di­men­sions of the prob­lem and the na­ture of the in­ter­ven­tions to ad­dress same. On­ly in­sid­ers can pro­vide this in­for­ma­tion and in the in­for­ma­tion age, this is the type of da­ta that must be col­lect­ed, col­lat­ed, analysed and used to in­form any kind of in­ter­ven­tion, com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing or oth­er­wise.

Some have sim­ply tak­en the po­si­tion that mis­cre­ants should be erad­i­cat­ed by the po­lice when­ev­er the op­por­tu­ni­ty aris­es. This is a bad idea. Any armed ser­vice that sees its role as an ex­ter­mi­na­tor may al­so fail to dis­tin­guish be­tween tar­gets. Com­mu­ni­ties are not black box­es, and the bad boys did not fall from the sky. We need to de­con­struct their ges­ta­tion and find their breed­ing grounds. If the UWI so­ci­ol­o­gy de­part­ment is to be of any rel­e­vance to ad­dress­ing na­tion­al prob­lems, these are the ques­tions that it needs to ad­dress.

Sel­wyn Ryan’s “No time to quit" had im­por­tant in­sights. Were these in­sights ever ad­dressed at a pol­i­cy lev­el? Are sec­ondary school-leavers in dan­ger since they need mon­ey, and the gangs need them? But we need a deep un­der­stand­ing of the fam­i­ly, com­mu­ni­ty, and gang dy­nam­ics in each con­text to al­low the health in­sti­tu­tions, the so­cial work in­sti­tu­tions, the po­lice, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to find ways to in­ter­vene. Broad brush la­bels and so­cial pro­grammes can­not lead to sus­tain­able re­sults un­less they are in­formed by analy­sis. Who is do­ing the so­ci­o­log­i­cal analy­sis, and how is the analy­sis in­form­ing gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy?