The most strik­ing find­ing from the Sun­day Guardian’s re­port on Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders un­der suc­ces­sive States of Emer­gency (SoEs) is the rel­a­tive­ly low num­ber of de­tainees ul­ti­mate­ly charged with crim­i­nal of­fences.

The fig­ures are telling. Of the 776 peo­ple de­tained dur­ing var­i­ous SoEs, many were even­tu­al­ly re­leased with­out charge. Un­der the SoE im­posed by the ad­min­is­tra­tion of for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, all 50 de­tainees were re­leased. Dur­ing the last SoE, 540 peo­ple were de­tained but on­ly 240 were charged, leav­ing 300 re­leased. In the first SoE de­clared by the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion, 153 peo­ple were de­tained, 29 were charged and 20 re­mained in cus­tody, while most were freed.

These sta­tis­tics raise le­git­i­mate ques­tions about the ef­fec­tive­ness of pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion as a strat­e­gy for dis­man­tling or­gan­ised crim­i­nal net­works. They al­so high­light the need for greater trans­paren­cy re­gard­ing the of­fences al­leged­ly com­mit­ted by those charged. Were they ac­cused of mur­der, gang mem­ber­ship, gun and drug traf­fick­ing, or plots against the State? With­out such in­for­ma­tion, the pub­lic can­not de­ter­mine whether au­thor­i­ties are tar­get­ing crim­i­nal king­pins or mere­ly pe­riph­er­al ac­tors.

When the cur­rent gov­ern­ment first de­clared an SoE, it cit­ed threats from crim­i­nal gangs to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, in­clud­ing con­cerns about pos­si­ble at­tacks dur­ing In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions. Such warn­ings sug­gest­ed crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions ca­pa­ble of chal­leng­ing the au­thor­i­ty of the State it­self. Cit­i­zens are there­fore en­ti­tled to know whether those re­spon­si­ble have been iden­ti­fied, ar­rest­ed and pros­e­cut­ed.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has re­port­ed a 41 per cent re­duc­tion in mur­ders dur­ing pe­ri­ods cov­ered by emer­gency mea­sures. That de­cline is sig­nif­i­cant and de­serves recog­ni­tion. By that mea­sure, the SoEs have pro­duced re­sults.

Yet crime re­duc­tion is not the same as crime res­o­lu­tion.

Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad has ar­gued that while an SoE may sup­press crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, it does not nec­es­sar­i­ly ad­dress the un­der­ly­ing caus­es of vi­o­lence. His ob­ser­va­tion that an SoE “cov­ers a wound but doesn’t re­al­ly heal the wound” cap­tures the dilem­ma fac­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers. Emer­gency pow­ers may in­ter­rupt crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, but whether they per­ma­nent­ly weak­en crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions re­mains un­cer­tain.

Af­ter near­ly 18 months un­der vary­ing emer­gency reg­u­la­tions, the cen­tral ques­tion re­mains whether these mea­sures have fun­da­men­tal­ly dis­rupt­ed the crim­i­nal ecosys­tem that fu­els vi­o­lence or mere­ly sup­pressed its symp­toms.

There is lit­tle doubt that suc­ces­sive SoEs have re­duced mur­ders while in force. What re­mains un­clear is whether they have dis­man­tled en­trenched gangs, dis­rupt­ed the fi­nanciers who sus­tain them, or bro­ken the net­works traf­fick­ing guns, am­mu­ni­tion and drugs.

Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials con­tin­ue to point to low­er mur­der rates as ev­i­dence of suc­cess. But the con­tin­ued es­tab­lish­ment of se­cu­ri­ty posts and con­sid­er­a­tion of spe­cial se­cu­ri­ty zones sug­gest an ac­knowl­edge­ment that emer­gency pow­ers alone can­not se­cure last­ing gains.

The ul­ti­mate test of the SoE is not sim­ply whether few­er peo­ple are killed while emer­gency reg­u­la­tions re­main in place. It is whether the gangs, traf­fick­ers and fi­nanciers who prof­it from vi­o­lence are dis­man­tled and brought be­fore the courts.

Few­er mur­ders are a no­table achieve­ment and should not be dis­missed. But last­ing vic­to­ry against crime re­quires more than tem­po­rary sup­pres­sion. It re­quires the de­struc­tion of the crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions and fi­nan­cial net­works that make vi­o­lence pos­si­ble in the first place.