Chester Sam­bra­no

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath wants a pub­lic meet­ing be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and the Op­po­si­tion Leader to dis­cuss crime.

His com­ments fol­low the re­cent spat be­tween both lead­ers on the is­sue of T&T’s crime woes.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Dr Ra­goonath said, “We need to have a con­ver­sa­tion be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter and the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion but not be­hind closed doors where af­ter­wards both of them would come out and say the talks were cor­dial and then what hap­pens af­ter? The pop­u­la­tion is look­ing on and we need to see and we need to hear what their pro­pos­als are and what their so­lu­tions are and there up­on, force them in­to work­ing to­wards some so­lu­tion.”

He said politi­ci­sa­tion of crime has been hap­pen­ing for a very long time, with suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments pro­duc­ing crime plans, but there has been no re­al fix.

“What we need is a re­al na­tion­al sit down and talk about how we are go­ing to deal with the crime sit­u­a­tion,” he said

Dr Ra­goonath said this was promised by the Prime Min­is­ter, but then he “pulled the rug from un­der our feet” when he switched to a re­gion­al sym­po­sium.

“Did the re­gion­al con­sul­ta­tion point us in the di­rec­tion where we can solve our own na­tion­al is­sues? The sim­ple an­swer to that ques­tion is no.”

He al­so called for both the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion mem­bers to re­spect each oth­er.

“Do they show any re­spect for each oth­er? And that ques­tion re­dounds now to the whole ques­tion about the fol­low­ers,” he said, adding when the lead­ers speak their fol­low­ers re­act.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad had a sim­i­lar view about pol­i­tics and crime

“We should not be fight­ing and I have al­ways main­tained that the ad­ver­sar­i­al po­lit­i­cal sys­tem that we have is some­thing that works against us very, very bad­ly,” he said.

He said bad out­shoots are when gov­ern­ment changes hands and the new lead­er­ship throws out every­thing and key per­son­nel

“They throw out good with the bad,” he said.

Dr Seep­er­sad said if the par­ties in pow­er can­not re­alise the se­ri­ous­ness of the crime prob­lem, then it may call for a change in the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem and that may call for pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

“It means that every­body has to have a say in gov­er­nance,” he said.

How­ev­er, giv­en the con­sti­tu­tion­al arrange­ment, that change may not be im­me­di­ate­ly pos­si­ble.

“If not, the price is paid in blood through­out the coun­try,” Seep­er­sad said.

He al­so lament­ed the use of race in the crime dis­cus­sion.

“It is very un­for­tu­nate, be­cause race has noth­ing to do with the crime sit­u­a­tion, it has to do with de­pri­va­tion of par­tic­u­lar groups and so­cial iso­la­tion of cer­tain groups et cetera. From the time you start to play the race card, re­al­ly, that is noth­ing but an off­shoot of pol­i­tics rear­ing its dirty head.”

Last week, Pun­dit Satyanand Ma­haraj said he be­lieves ur­ban youth along the East-West cor­ri­dor are tar­get­ing peo­ple of East In­di­an de­scent in Aranguez, San Juan, and across the coun­try. How­ev­er, this was dis­put­ed by the Po­lice Ser­vice and the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha dis­tanced it­self from the state­ments.

Seep­er­sad said it was un­for­tu­nate that all the da­ta avail­able on race is still be­ing used.

“This will on­ly car­ry us sev­er­al steps back­ward,” he said.

The ques­tion of da­ta and its use was a ma­jor sore point for crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Keron King.

“We don’t need to make ir­rel­e­vant as­sump­tions, racial­ly charged or oth­er­wise,” he said.

Dr King said the coun­try has da­ta avail­able both at the lev­el of law en­force­ment and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

“It is un­for­tu­nate for me, as a crim­i­nol­o­gist who lives in da­ta, to ex­pe­ri­ence and ob­serve this. I hoped that by now we would have been in a place where when we talk­ing about crime, whether is vi­o­lent crime or fam­i­ly vi­o­lence, whether is white-col­lar crime, that our dis­cus­sion would have been much more el­e­vat­ed as sci­ence-based dis­cus­sions. It is dou­bly up­set­ting be­cause we are just about a week or so off from the re­gion­al sym­po­sium that sought to dis­cuss crime in a da­ta-based way from an ev­i­dence-based point of view,” King said.

He added, “It is deeply un­for­tu­nate for a coun­try that has been bat­tling with vi­o­lent crime for more than two decades now that we have now in­tro­duced a po­lit­i­cal el­e­ment.”

He said it is un­for­tu­nate that this is hap­pen­ing while the lives of law-abid­ing cit­i­zens are at risk.

“Be smart on crime, we have to have no pa­tience for any­one, po­lit­i­cal pun­dits, aca­d­e­mics, peo­ple from civ­il so­ci­ety, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, we must have no pa­tience for ar­gu­ments that are not ground­ed in da­ta,” he said.