Spe­cial Re­port

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

A mur­der costs the state at least $5,545 even be­fore a fu­ner­al ser­vice can be held. That does not in­clude the cost of an au­top­sy.

The fig­ure is based on the fees charged by fu­ner­al homes for the trans­porta­tion, stor­age and equip­ment used for the re­moval of a body from a crime scene.

For the 341 mur­ders record­ed as of Thurs­day morn­ing, the state has al­ready spent, at min­i­mum, $1,890,845 for the year.

Us­ing this es­ti­mate, the gov­ern­ment has spent at least $29,116,795 on the re­moval, stor­age and trans­porta­tion of mur­der vic­tims’ bod­ies over the past decade.

At a 2023 In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) sym­po­sium it was es­ti­mat­ed that 4.07 per cent of this coun­try’s GDP (ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT $1.4 bil­lion), is spent on deal­ing with vi­o­lent crime. Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Dr An­dres Rengi­fo cal­cu­lat­ed that, based on da­ta ob­tained in 2022, a sin­gle mur­der costs $2.4 mil­lion.

Due to in­fla­tion and an in­crease in the num­ber of killings, stake­hold­ers in dif­fer­ent in­dus­tries be­lieve the cost has risen and will con­tin­ue ris­ing, mak­ing vi­o­lent crime a dan­ger­ous and ex­pen­sive prob­lem.

As of Ju­ly 25, the mur­der count for 2024 was 341, over­tak­ing the toll for the same pe­ri­od last year which was 329.

This is the first time in al­most two years that the mur­der toll has eclipsed the pre­vi­ous year’s fig­ure, rais­ing con­cerns that mur­ders may in­crease be­yond last year’s fig­ure of 576, which dipped slight­ly from the record-high mur­der count of 605 in 2022.

How­ev­er, a loss of life by mur­der al­so rep­re­sents a loss of in­come for house­holds and a loss of tax­es from an in­di­vid­ual on a so­ci­etal scale.

Re­mov­ing and stor­ing bod­ies isn’t cheap.

Fu­ner­al homes in dif­fer­ent parts of T&T op­er­ate on a ros­ter with di­vi­sion­al po­lice when there is a mur­der, un­nat­ur­al death or road fa­tal­i­ty. At any time of day or night, fu­ner­al homes on call can be con­tact­ed by po­lice to trans­port a body.

The des­ig­nat­ed fu­ner­al home bills the state the cost of re­mov­ing the body from the scene of a crime or ac­ci­dent plus a sep­a­rate fee for stor­ing the body in their re­frig­er­a­tion units be­fore an au­top­sy could be done at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre (FSC), St James.

Di­rec­tor of Simp­son’s Memo­r­i­al Home Ltd, David Simp­son, said the cur­rent fee struc­ture is ex­pect­ed to in­crease be­cause of in­creased ship­ping costs for ba­sic items and the rates of elec­tric­i­ty con­sump­tion for in­dus­tri­al use.

“With the in­crease in elec­tric­i­ty there has been an in­crease so I’m quite sure that re­frig­er­a­tion costs will even­tu­al­ly rise be­cause we’re pay­ing more now than we were pay­ing be­fore,” Simp­son said.

“The cost of equip­ment we need from sup­pli­ers in or­der to ef­fect these re­movals, we are charged based on what Cus­toms and Ex­cise charges, based on what the ship­ping costs are and what­ev­er bro­ker­age fees are in­curred by a sup­pli­er.

“The cost will be passed on to us and there­fore we will have to pass it on to make sure we can break even.”

Simp­son said ba­sic items for re­movals like body bags are cost­ly. His com­pa­ny of­ten or­ders them in bulk from man­u­fac­tur­ers.

Lo­cal­ly, adult body bags cost $210 plus VAT, in­di­vid­u­al­ly or in packs of ten.

Simp­son said un­der­tak­ers called to a mur­der scene fill out forms with in­for­ma­tion on how many work­ers were in­volved in car­ry­ing the body, how many body bags were used and how many cov­er­alls were used. This in­for­ma­tion is in­clud­ed in a bill that is stamped and signed by of­fi­cers at the dis­trict po­lice sta­tion and sub­mit­ted to the ac­counts de­part­ment of the High Court where they are processed and a cheque is­sued.

Simp­son said in his ex­pe­ri­ence most of the fam­i­lies of mur­der vic­tims have not sought as­sis­tance through the NIB’s fu­ner­al grants as they are ei­ther un­em­ployed or too young to make suf­fi­cient con­tri­bu­tions to be el­i­gi­ble.

Fam­i­lies who can­not af­ford the cost of a fu­ner­al ap­ply to the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices for a fu­ner­al grant of $7000. Ba­sic fu­ner­al pack­ages usu­al­ly be­gin at around $10,000 but some fu­ner­al homes of­fer ser­vices for as low as $6000.

At a re­gion­al sym­po­sium on crime and vi­o­lence as a pub­lic health cri­sis in April 2023, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley quot­ed sta­tis­tics show­ing that surgery for a gun­shot wound to the head costs around $170,000, while surgery for a chest wound costs $135,000.

There was no re­sponse to ques­tions sent to the Min­istry of Health about the cost of treat­ment for gun­shot wounds, but for­mer gen­er­al man­ag­er of the North-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) Dr Kee­gan Bag­gan said it is like­ly the cost of surgery has in­creased since 2022.

Dr Bag­gan said the ship­ping costs for med­ical equip­ment are a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in the fi­nal bill for vi­o­lent crime.

“Wounds from gun­shots re­quire sur­gi­cal the­atre time, it re­quires sur­geons de­pend­ing on what area is af­fect­ed. It’s more than just the util­i­ties (prices) that have in­creased, what has im­pact­ed health­care over­all is that we’ve been hav­ing prob­lems with glob­al man­u­fac­tur­ing and glob­al trans­port so ship­ping equip­ment costs more to bring those things in,” he ex­plained.

“Things like blood test­ing reagents, the man­u­fac­tur­ers if they aren’t pro­duc­ing enough will con­trol how much they sup­ply to each buy­er.”

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Wen­dell Wal­lace said the fi­nan­cial vac­u­um cre­at­ed when bread­win­ners are killed is a se­ri­ous hur­dle for some fam­i­lies.

“With­out a doubt, there is a bur­den that is placed on the re­main­ing fam­i­ly mem­ber but it de­pends on the po­si­tion­al­i­ty of the per­son who was killed.

“I have seen in­stances where stu­dents have to with­draw from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies be­cause their fa­ther was the sole bread­win­ner. If it’s a house­hold where both par­ents are work­ing to pay the mort­gage, you’ll have the bur­den falling on that per­son to stretch their re­sources to cov­er those of the de­ceased per­son,” he said.

For the rel­a­tives of wa­ter­mel­on ven­dor Dil­lon Joseph, the trau­ma of his mur­der and the fi­nan­cial strain have made heal­ing dif­fi­cult and ex­pen­sive.

Joseph, 32, was gunned down at his wa­ter­mel­on stall on the Ca­roni Sa­van­nah Road in April 2023.

He was one of sev­er­al res­i­dents of Train­line Vil­lage, St Au­gus­tine, mur­dered be­tween Jan­u­ary and June last year.

Joseph’s old­er sis­ter, In­drani, said he lived with her and oth­er rel­a­tives who of­ten pooled fi­nances from their re­spec­tive jobs to sur­vive. Since his mur­der, she has sold her car and the fam­i­ly’s van which they used to trans­port pro­duce to make up for the loss of in­come.

“We sold every­thing to sur­vive for that year and I end­ed up with noth­ing, no house, not even clothes. Peo­ple gave us things and that’s how we sur­vived. We lit­er­al­ly had to start over from scratch,” she said.

Joseph was one of sev­er­al fam­i­lies whose homes were fire­bombed by crim­i­nals dur­ing the at­tacks on Train­line Vil­lage res­i­dents last year. She moved out of the St Au­gus­tine neigh­bour­hood and doubts she will ever re­turn.

While she was un­able to give an ex­act fig­ure of the in­come lost from her broth­er’s mur­der, Joseph said it was “quite high” as his fu­ner­al ex­pens­es alone were over $10,000.

“When a fam­i­ly mem­ber dies peo­ple don’t re­alise how hard it is fi­nan­cial­ly to re­cov­er. To sur­vive you have to start back all over from scratch. There are peo­ple who have fam­i­ly to help them, but I have no­body to help me be­cause I lost my mom and my broth­er last year. My mom got wel­fare but since she passed it all falls on me,” she said.

Joseph now works at a pro­duce stall and does her best to sup­port her sur­viv­ing rel­a­tives but is still haunt­ed by her broth­er’s mur­der. In ad­di­tion to the loss of sleep, she suf­fers flash­backs of the mur­der scene and see­ing his body.

“I raised him as if he was my own child since I was the old­est, so when he died it felt like I lost my son, not just a broth­er.”