Ian D Quan-Soon

New York City, NY

iqfinsvcs@aol.com

In a re­cent T&T Guardian ar­ti­cle, colum­nist Raphael John-Lall wrote: “The Gov­ern­ment has spent $54 bil­lion on the coun­try’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty over the last eight years, with at least $828 mil­lions of that fig­ure go­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), yet cit­i­zens are gripped by fear and forced to watch over their shoul­ders in their homes and pub­lic spaces as crim­i­nals have be­come more brazen in their at­tacks. Not even ba­bies and tod­dlers are es­cap­ing the gun­men’s fire. Even Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view, has de­clared to the Sun­day Guardian that he un­der­stood the trau­ma and fear that cit­i­zens are liv­ing un­der and said the Gov­ern­ment was work­ing on so­lu­tions.” 

Ac­cord­ing to the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank, “mur­ders, shoot­ings, wound­ing and do­mes­tic vi­o­lence cost T&T more than $6 bil­lion in 2022”, or, about 4.0 per cent of GDP. It would serve us well to ask: what are the un­der­ly­ing caus­es for the un­re­lent­ing rise in crime? Why are we fail­ing to stem the rise? And what could be done to get bet­ter re­sults for the monies be­ing spent? 

In­di­vid­u­als com­mit crimes for var­i­ous emo­tion­al and fi­nan­cial rea­sons some of which are re­ferred to as white-col­lar crimes. The for­mer typ­i­cal­ly in­volve most­ly friends, ac­quain­tances or fam­i­ly mem­bers. The lat­ter com­mit crimes for rea­sons re­lat­ed to pover­ty, drug deal­ing, busi­ness dis­putes. Un­like crimes of pas­sion most crimes are com­mit­ted by youth ages 14 through 17 and adults ages 18-45. The TT Chil­dren’s court re­port­ed that for the pe­ri­od 2018 - 2022 an av­er­age of 443 crim­i­nal cas­es were filed against chil­dren for each year.

Dur­ing the pe­ri­od Feb­ru­ary 2018 through May 31, 2022, 1,771 crim­i­nal cas­es were filed against youth ages 7 to 17. A wide­ly ac­cept­ed and vet­ted facet of crim­i­nol­o­gy, known as the “Age Crime Curve”, in­di­cates that across con­ti­nents and cen­turies crimes tend to peak in the late teenage years, with a sharp drop off by adults in their 20’s, and de­clin­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly for adults in their 40’s. T&T’s pop­u­la­tion of males and fe­males with­in the age groups of 10 to 45 his­tor­i­cal­ly av­er­age a to­tal of about 600,000 in­di­vid­u­als. 

If the ma­jor rea­son for com­mit­ting crimes is fi­nan­cial gain, the T&T gov­ern­ment (GORTT) should con­sid­er of­fer­ing a fi­nan­cial in­cen­tive for all cit­i­zens be­tween ages 10 through 45 for the pro­mo­tion of good cit­i­zen­ship free of crime. The ben­e­fits of the Good Cit­i­zen­ship Fi­nan­cial Awards (GC­FA) pro­gram would be as fol­low: Low­er over­all crime pre­ven­tion costs; re­duc­tion of crimes com­mit­ted in both the short and long terms pe­ri­ods; mit­i­ga­tion of so­ci­ety’s fear of crime; re­duc­tion in over­all pover­ty; im­prove­ment in ed­u­ca­tion­al achieve­ment with­in poor and un­der-achiev­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

GORTT would of­fer cit­i­zens ages 10 to 44, a $100,000 bond with a 20-year ma­tu­ri­ty pe­ri­od for every­one. The to­tal cost would be US$2.67 bil­lion in 2023 dol­lars. This rep­re­sents the present val­ue of TT$60.0 Bil­lion (600,000 X $100,000) in year 2043 dol­lars (as­sum­ing the pro­gramme starts in 2023) dis­count­ed at a 6.0 per cent rate of in­ter­est based on an es­ti­mat­ed av­er­age GORTT long-term cost of funds.

GORTT would al­lo­cate the afore-men­tioned US$2.67 bil­lion from its cur­rent Her­itage Sta­bi­liza­tion Funds (HSF) for this pur­pose. There would be no need for an im­me­di­ate draw down of the HSF: A set-aside al­lo­ca­tion specif­i­cal­ly for this pur­pose would not neg­a­tive­ly im­pact T&T’s fi­nan­cial bal­ance sheet or, the na­tion’s cred­it rat­ings.

To qual­i­fy for fi­nal pay­outs at ma­tu­ri­ty in year 2043, in­di­vid­u­als would be re­quired to meet the fol­low­ing stan­dards:

(1) A crime-free record dur­ing the 20 year pe­ri­od;

(2) For ages 10-18, one must grad­u­ate from a GORTT ap­proved high school with ed­u­ca­tion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions to-be-de­ter­mined by the GORTT: num­ber of pass­es, etc.

(3) Dis­tri­b­u­tions from Bond pro­ceeds at ma­tu­ri­ty must be utilised sole­ly for the fol­low­ing pur­pos­es: high­er ed­u­ca­tion, start­ing a busi­ness, re­tire­ment or med­ical ex­pens­es for one­self or im­me­di­ate fam­i­ly (moth­er, fa­ther, sis­ter, broth­er, son or daugh­ter).

(4) Funds can­not be ac­cessed pri­or to the 20-year ma­tu­ri­ty pe­ri­od.

(5) In the event of one’s death, a ben­e­fi­cia­ry fam­i­ly mem­ber would be el­i­gi­ble for a dis­tri­b­u­tion of bond pro­ceeds be­gin­ning in year 20 pro­vid­ed the ben­e­fi­cia­ry meets re­quire­ments for use of pro­ceeds as spec­i­fied in (3) above.

The ben­e­fits of the pro­gramme would be as fol­low:

Re­duc­tions in crimes by youth who would lose what for them would be a guar­an­teed sub­stan­tial life sav­ings, that would al­so help al­le­vi­ate fam­i­ly pover­ty;

A guar­an­teed fi­nan­cial nest egg would help to lev­el the play­ing field for poor fam­i­lies due to bet­ter ed­u­cat­ed youth and a guar­an­teed fu­ture fam­i­ly nest-egg es­pe­cial­ly for larg­er fam­i­lies;

Al­though cit­i­zens ages 1 through 9 and ages 45+ would not ben­e­fit im­me­di­ate­ly from the pro­gram, less over­all crime and as­so­ci­at­ed costs would ac­crue them and the na­tion each year. As the pro­gramme pro­gress­es every cit­i­zen would even­tu­al­ly qual­i­fy for the pro­gram and would ben­e­fit fi­nan­cial­ly and so­cial­ly from the pro­gramme be­gin­ning at age 10;

Par­ents would have an in­cen­tive to be in­volved to a greater ex­tent with their chil­dren’s ed­u­ca­tion and in re­in­forc­ing crime-free lifestyles.    

Many would ob­ject to the pro­gramme’s cost and af­ford­abil­i­ty con­sid­er­ing cur­rent gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­tures and at the thought of des­ig­nat­ing the HSF as the source of fund­ing for the pro­gramme. How­ev­er, one must ask: What is the great­est threat to the na­tion’s so­cial and fi­nan­cial se­cu­ri­ty?  My an­swer would be spi­ral­ing crime rates and as­so­ci­at­ed costs that have con­tin­ued un­abat­ed since year 2000.

It should be not­ed, that as bonds ma­ture many, if not most, in­di­vid­u­als would prob­a­bly not im­me­di­ate­ly draw down their en­tire nest-egg. As a re­sult, the im­pact on the HSF could be great­ly min­imised.  

Fur­ther, the pro­ject­ed US$2.67 bil­lion is rel­a­tive­ly small in re­la­tion to the cur­rent $6.0 bil­lion an­nu­al cost of crime to gov­ern­ment, T&T busi­ness­es, T&T fam­i­lies im­pact­ed by per­son­al loss­es and to the so­ci­ety in gen­er­al due to cur­tail­ment of their ac­tiv­i­ties and in­creas­es in per­son­al fi­nan­cial pro­tec­tion costs for their homes, au­tos and oth­er pos­ses­sions

 For many, this would be a rad­i­cal pro­gram and ob­ject sim­ply on that ba­sis. What are the vi­able al­ter­na­tives? Both gov­ern­ments have tried every­thing else at great ex­pense with­out suc­cess. Many are call­ing for in­creas­es in num­bers of po­lice, courts, jails, judges and more pow­er­ful arms to fight the crim­i­nals, which would add to the per­ma­nent fixed costs of na­tion­al bud­gets. More­over, our free­doms and civ­il rights are un­der threat with calls for work­able gov­ern­ment so­lu­tions, that re­sult­ed in a re­cent rec­om­men­da­tion by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al for sus­pen­sion of the right to tri­als by ju­ry for cer­tain cas­es to help al­le­vi­ate court back­logs. Crime dic­tates our na­tion­al and per­son­al agen­das at great costs for every­one.

I am a for­mer en­tre­pre­neur with 40 years in the fi­nan­cial ser­vices in­dus­try on Wall Street, New York, and as a ten (10) years in­vest­ment as­set man­ag­er for the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Growth and In­come and Eq­ui­ty Funds, I have con­duct­ed sem­i­nars through­out the coun­try: Cham­bers of Com­merce, Cred­it Unions and busi­ness as­so­ci­a­tions. And, lec­tured on in­vest­ments and per­son­al and fam­i­ly fi­nan­cial plan­ning. 

I have abid­ing in­ter­est in the wel­fare of my beloved coun­try and the eco­nom­ic well­be­ing of my fel­low coun­try­men. I al­so have im­me­di­ate fam­i­ly and friends in Trinidad who live in fear for their well-be­ing and per­son­al prop­er­ties. T&T are en­dowed with am­ple re­sources and hu­man po­ten­tial that can­not and must not be al­lowed to be wast­ed. Cit­i­zens should heed Dr Mar­tin Luther King’s dic­tum:

“The ul­ti­mate tragedy is not the op­pres­sion and cru­el­ty by the bad peo­ple but the si­lence over that by the good peo­ple.”