Sev­er­al ex­perts have of­fered a wide range of strate­gies to fight crime in­clud­ing greater so­cial in­ter­ven­tions and not harsh­er penal­ties. One has even ar­gued against “mil­i­taris­ing” the coun­try by giv­ing every­one ac­cess to guns.

Pro­fes­sor Emeri­ta Rho­da Red­dock has sug­gest­ed that a more con­cert­ed de­ploy­ment of so­cial de­vel­op­ment re­sources would tack­le crime and vi­o­lence.

Red­dock made the sug­ges­tions dur­ing a pre-record­ed pre­sen­ta­tion at the Peo­ple’s Round­table dis­cus­sion on crime at the Cipri­ani Labour Col­lege, Val­sayn, yes­ter­day.

She was un­able to at­tend the fo­rum in per­son as she was abroad at the time but pre­pared a vir­tu­al pre­sen­ta­tion, where she ar­gued the need for more di­rect so­cial as­sis­tance.

She said that the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of so­cial in­ter­ven­tions has been shift­ed from the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment to non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGOs) with lit­tle suc­cess.

Re­fer­ring to wide­spread me­dia cam­paigns once con­duct­ed by the Na­tion­al Al­co­hol and Drug Abuse Pre­ven­tion Pro­gramme (NADAPP) to raise aware­ness and en­cour­age treat­ment, Red­dock said the fo­cus of the cur­rent So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry ap­pears to have shift­ed to case­work and the is­suance of grants.

“In fact, many of the so­cial work­ers who are trained to do so­cial work com­plain that most of their lives are spent ar­rang­ing to give grants to peo­ple.

“We have a sit­u­a­tion there­fore where the in­di­gent can­not ac­cess sys­tem­at­ic help through the struc­ture of so­cial ser­vices but end up go­ing to the me­dia to plead their in­di­vid­ual cas­es,” she said.

Red­dock added that the ab­sence of prop­er so­cial sup­port sys­tems in some neigh­bour­hoods al­lowed gang lead­ers to act as “com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers” by of­fer­ing as­sis­tance, be­com­ing fur­ther ac­cept­ed by the neigh­bour­hood.

“In oth­er words the wel­fare not pro­vid­ed by the State is pro­vid­ed by the gang. Gang mem­ber­ship rep­re­sents op­por­tu­ni­ties for com­mu­ni­ties as well as so­cial and eco­nom­ic sup­port and they note that with ur­ban com­mu­ni­ties, the gang lead­ers are dons be­come the lead­ers of states with­in states, es­ca­lat­ing crises of gov­ern­abil­i­ty which re­sult in in­creased State vi­o­lence and mil­i­tarism,” the pro­fes­sor ex­plained.

Quot­ing da­ta ob­tained from a study in Swe­den, Red­dock fur­ther con­tend­ed that harsh­er pun­ish­ments have done lit­tle to slow down crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties adding that cre­at­ing a more eq­ui­table so­ci­ety was key to re­duc­ing crime.

Al­so speak­ing at the event was the founder of the En­ter­prise-based Ryu Dan Do­jo and Em­pow­er­ment Cen­tre Shi­han Mar­va John Lo­gan who said based on her in­ter­ac­tions with at-risk youth, a vi­able al­ter­na­tive to crime must be pro­vid­ed.

“I got the in­for­ma­tion from the streets. We can­not tell them to leave crime with­out pro­vid­ing a pos­i­tive al­ter­na­tive to crime.

“We have to make sure what we’re pro­vid­ing for them looks just as good or even bet­ter,” she said.

Lo­gan has been ac­tive­ly in­volved in var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ty em­pow­er­ment out­reach pro­grammes us­ing mar­tial arts as a ve­hi­cle of change and dis­ci­pline.

Dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion re­tired po­lice cor­po­ral Wayne Hayde whose ad­dress was livestreamed from Ugan­da where he lives said while he did not agree that arm­ing cit­i­zens was the so­lu­tion, he felt that stiffer penal­ties for gun pos­ses­sion would make a dif­fer­ence.

Hayde, who was at one point a can­di­date for Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, warned that in­creas­ing the ease of ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to guns could po­ten­tial­ly “mil­i­tarise” so­ci­ety.