Gail Alexan­der

Calls have come for Cari­com’s up­com­ing crime sym­po­sium to con­sid­er a joint Cari­com ef­fort at mul­ti-bor­der pa­trol/con­trols, present a com­pre­hen­sive plan to deal with transna­tion­al drugs and guns —and for sym­po­sium chair­man, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, to lis­ten to T&T’s peo­ple.

These were made re­spec­tive­ly by the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT), In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Paul Richards and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day.

The sym­po­sium will be held next Mon­day and Tues­day at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain on the theme, “Vi­o­lence as a Pub­lic Health Is­sue – The Crime Chal­lenge.”

The sym­po­sium seeks to pro­mote di­a­logue and re­gion­al ac­tion aimed at vi­o­lence re­duc­tion and crime pre­ven­tion. It was an­nounced fol­low­ing Cari­com’s Feb­ru­ary meet­ing. T&T holds the lead on Cari­com’s re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty. Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley will chair the meet­ing.

At least sev­en of Cari­com’s 14 lead­ers will par­tic­i­pate. At­ten­dance con­firmed by the For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­istry in­clude Prime Min­is­ters Philip Davis (Ba­hamas), Mia Mot­t­ley (Bar­ba­dos), An­drew Hol­ness (Ja­maica), Dick­on Mitchell (Grena­da), Ter­rence Drew (St Kitts/Nevis), Philip J Pierre (St Lu­cia) and Suri­name’s Pres­i­dent Chan­drikaper­sad San­tokhi. The Turks and Caicos is al­so ex­pect­ed.

Al­so at­tend­ing will be US and Mex­i­can ex­perts, plus the pres­i­dents of the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank, In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank, Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion and IRO and CARPHA’s ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor.

Weapons en­ter­ing the re­gion and oth­er se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters af­fect­ing ter­ri­to­ries will be on the agen­da, as well as Cari­com join­ing Mex­i­co’s le­gal ap­peal in the US against Amer­i­can-made weapons.

Views on the event came yes­ter­day from:

SATT pres­i­dent Ra­jiv Diptee:

“It’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the re­gion to ex­am­ine the en­dem­ic root caus­es of crime. There’s been in­creased crime, in­clud­ing Ja­maica, T&T, Suri­name, and there’s been in­creased gun vi­o­lence as a re­sult.

“We’d like to see the com­mit­ment to ac­tion through quan­tifi­able ini­tia­tives pre­sent­ed in a frame­work that is able to be achieved in the short, medi­um and long term. The pro­lif­er­a­tion of il­le­gal firearms re­gion­al­ly is a ma­jor con­cern to the Cari­com, as there are porous bor­ders across the re­gion and not on­ly T&T. A joint Cari­com ef­fort at mul­ti-bor­der pa­trol/con­trols should be con­sid­ered.”

Op­po­si­tion Leader

Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar:

“In the na­tion­al fight against crime, it’s im­por­tant that se­ri­ous dis­cus­sions be had with all stake­hold­ers on find­ing so­lu­tions. How­ev­er, the crime sym­po­sium be­ing host­ed by Kei­th Row­ley next Mon­day is bizarre be­cause it ex­cludes the most im­por­tant stake­hold­er on this is­sue—T&T’s peo­ple,”

“For the past sev­en years, Row­ley has ei­ther ver­bal­ly as­sault­ed, ridiculed or flat­ly ig­nored all pub­lic voic­es, ex­pert opin­ion and in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions who’ve spo­ken out on T&T’s ter­ri­fy­ing cli­mate of crime. How can a sym­po­sium to ad­dress crime ex­clude in­put from those most af­fect­ed by it?”

“Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice on Drugs and Crime (UN­ODC), T&T’s homi­cide rate in 2019 was 29.3 per 100,000 in­hab­i­tants - high­er than the glob­al av­er­age of 6.1 per 100,000 in­hab­i­tants. This week, the World of Sta­tis­tics placed T&T sixth in their top sev­en in the ‘world’s most crim­i­nal coun­tries’, stat­ing that an in­cred­i­ble 71 crimes oc­cur per every 100,000 per­sons.

“Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds’ state­ment that it’s not up to him to craft an an­ti-crime plan on­ly un­der­scores how in­ept and out of touch this Row­ley Gov­ern­ment is. There are se­ri­ous is­sues con­cern­ing de­fi­cien­cies in our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, law en­force­ment and ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem...I strong­ly ad­vise Row­ley to read the UNC’s Eco­nom­ic Trans­for­ma­tion Plan. But he must first start lis­ten­ing to T&T’s peo­ple rather than talk­ing down to them from his tax­pay­er-fund­ed posh lun­cheon at the Hy­att.”

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor

Paul Richards:

“A com­pre­hen­sive plan, in­clud­ing re­search and col­lab­o­ra­tion with aca­d­e­m­ic, re­al re­gion­al da­ta/analy­sis. Al­so plans to deal with transna­tion­al drugs and il­le­gal guns en­ter­ing the re­gion and col­lab­o­rat­ing with gov­ern­ments of ju­ris­dic­tions where the ma­jor­i­ty of il­le­gal guns orig­i­nate.

“I’m hop­ing for fo­cus on white-col­lar crime, with spe­cial spot­light on the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of mon­ey trails and cor­rupt busi­ness en­ti­ties—and a spe­cif­ic re­gion­al ac­tion plan with ob­jec­tives, de­liv­er­ables and time­line.”

Crime con­fer­ence top­ics:

The sym­po­sium will fo­cus on the de­ter­mi­nants of crime by tak­ing a pub­lic health ap­proach, which would first iden­ti­fy the causal fac­tors and pre­ven­tions where pos­si­ble, fol­lowed by in­ter­ven­tions.

It will em­pha­sise a holis­tic sys­tem ap­proach, par­tic­u­lar­ly a whole-of-gov­ern­ment and whole-of-so­ci­ety ap­proach, in­volv­ing and col­lab­o­rat­ing with all rel­e­vant agen­cies, or­gan­i­sa­tions and sec­tors at dif­fer­ent lev­els, in­clud­ing civ­il so­ci­ety, busi­ness, com­mu­ni­ty, fam­i­lies and in­di­vid­u­als.

Top­ics to be dis­cussed over the two days in­clude: Vi­o­lence and Health in the Re­gion; Crime and Vi­o­lence: A Pub­lic Health Ap­proach; Men­tal Health; Transna­tion­al Or­gan­ised Crime; Us­ing Lit­i­ga­tion to Pro­tect Gun Vi­o­lence – Glob­al Ac­tion on Gun Vi­o­lence; Trans-Bor­der Crime; Ed­u­ca­tion and Youth, Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence; Eco­nom­ic In­equal­i­ties as the Dri­ver of Crime and Vi­o­lence; Com­mu­ni­ty ap­proach­es - Restora­tive Jus­tice; Sports and Me­di­a­tion; and the Ju­di­cial Per­spec­tive- Leg­is­la­tion and Ju­ve­nile Jus­tice Re­form.