RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has an­nounced the im­mi­nent roll­out of a Caribbean-wide gangs data­base and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Cari­com Ar­rest War­rant Bill, which aims to en­sure no safe har­bours for crim­i­nals any­where in the re­gion.

Speak­ing at Cari­com’s sec­ond re­gion­al sym­po­sium ti­tled- Vi­o­lence as a Pub­lic Health Is­sue in George­town, Guyana, yes­ter­day, Row­ley em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of these ini­tia­tives in strength­en­ing re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty and law en­force­ment col­lab­o­ra­tion.

“The Caribbean Gang Data­base will be a key re­source for law en­force­ment,” Row­ley said, adding, “In­for­ma­tion is strength. By iden­ti­fy­ing and shar­ing in­tel­li­gence on known bad ac­tors, law en­force­ment across the re­gion can work more ef­fec­tive­ly.”

He high­light­ed the sig­nif­i­cance of the Cari­com Ar­rest War­rant Bill, which aims to stan­dard­ise ex­tra­di­tion process­es across mem­ber states.

“Crim­i­nals must un­der­stand that in every Cari­com ter­ri­to­ry, the law ap­plies equal­ly to them as it re­lates to war­rants in an­tic­i­pa­tion of pros­e­cu­tion. There are no safe har­bours in any Caribbean ter­ri­to­ry. We want this leg­is­lat­ed,” Row­ley stat­ed.

He un­der­scored the role of tools such as the Ad­vance Pas­sen­ger In­for­ma­tion (API) and Pas­sen­ger Records Bill in en­abling bet­ter law en­force­ment.

“These tools will fa­cil­i­tate law en­force­ment ef­forts and en­able au­thor­i­ties to ap­pre­hend crim­i­nals more ef­fec­tive­ly,” he said.

Row­ley re­it­er­at­ed the need for com­pre­hen­sive so­lu­tions, say­ing the sym­po­sium pro­vid­ed a time­ly op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­gage in crit­i­cal top­ics, in­clud­ing the transna­tion­al na­ture of gangs, cul­tur­al in­flu­ences on crime, and the role of cor­rup­tion in law en­force­ment.

“Each of these de­mands our at­ten­tion if we are to trans­form the re­al­i­ties of the Caribbean,” he added.

Ear­li­er this year, there were re­ports from the me­dia in St Lu­cia that gangs from Trinidad were try­ing to re­cruit mem­bers from that is­land.

Po­lice of­fi­cials in St Kitts and Nevis as well as Grena­da al­so barred Trini­bad artiste Kman Sixx from per­form­ing in both coun­tries cit­ing a pos­si­ble spillover of gang ac­tiv­i­ty and safe­ty con­cerns.

The Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines has al­so com­plained about a rise in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty this year, in par­tic­u­lar gang vi­o­lence.

Mean­while, the Pres­i­dent of Guyana, Dr Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali, echoed Row­ley’s sen­ti­ments, em­pha­sis­ing the eco­nom­ic and so­cial costs of crime in the re­gion.

“The health­care sec­tor is the first to feel this bur­den. Imag­ine if we didn’t have this im­pact. We could have in­creased bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions in ed­u­ca­tion by 80 per cent.”

Ali point­ed to re­cent find­ings by the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank.

“The di­rect cost of crime and vi­o­lence in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean reached 3.44 per cent of the re­gion’s GDP in 2022. For us, this means re­al­lo­cat­ing scarce re­sources that could have been used for ed­u­ca­tion and hu­man cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment,” he ex­plained.

He al­so ad­dressed the gen­der im­bal­ance in crime sta­tis­tics and its im­pli­ca­tions.

“Eighty-five per cent of vi­o­lent crime is com­mit­ted by males. In Guyana, 66 per cent of uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents are women, and 70 per cent of schol­ar­ships are tak­en up by women. The con­se­quence is clear—young men are falling be­hind in ed­u­ca­tion and em­ploy­ment, dri­ving them to­ward crime,” Ali said.

High­light­ing the re­gion­al na­ture of the crime, he not­ed the chal­lenges posed by il­le­gal weapons and gang ac­tiv­i­ty.

“In coun­tries like Trinidad and To­ba­go and Guyana, we face not on­ly the in­flux of il­le­gal weapons but al­so the move­ment of gangs. This is fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed by large pop­u­la­tions like Venezuela and the in­ter­na­tion­al car­tels that use our air­space,” he said.

Ali stressed the im­por­tance of col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach­es.

“We have moved from siloed na­tion­al strate­gies to in­te­grat­ed re­gion­al task forces. Be­tween 2019 and 2024, we in­creased our al­lo­ca­tion to se­cu­ri­ty by 154 per cent. This re­flects the scale of the prob­lem we are ad­dress­ing,” he ex­plained.