Murder rate rises across Caribbean

THE murder rate in Trinidad and Tobago is cause for great concern but according to figures, the murder rate is soaring right across the Caribbean and this trend is worrying regional governments. Of 13 English-speaking Caricom members, Trinidad and Tobago comes sixth with the exact placing varying from month to month. The tide of murder extends to pretty little islands like St Kitts, as well as to the obvious concrete jungles. Dominica has had nine murders this year, and 11 in 2002, back in 2000 there was only one. There’s no obvious overall pattern to the deaths on that island. Some look like petty quarrels gone out of control, others like possible drug war causalities. But some social trends are worrying — there’s a minority streak of adolescent gang violence, which can draw real blood. Three schoolboys from Dominica’s “G-Unit” youth gang were charged in September with the attempted murder of a boy from the rival “Guada Squad.” They had allegedly cut off two of his fingers, and stolen his bicycle and gold ring.

Even in peaceful Barbados, the numbers are up — in 1997, there were 11 murders. Every year since then, the number has been over 20. Sources state that the high regional crime rate can’t simply be blamed on the economy. There is plenty of poverty in Jamaica and Guyana. But the danger zone extends to the Bahamas, where average incomes are more than double Trinidad and Tobago’s, unemployment is around ten percent and wages are high in construction and tourism. In Trinidad itself, unemployment is down from its 1987 peak of 22 percent — but that has not stopped the murder rate from rising. In some countries, National Security ministers face intensely personal criticism. But the regional crime wave does not flow from one set or faces at the top, or one set of initials in office — PNP, PLP, PNM. PUP, PPP, UNC, island-variety Labour. In Trinidad and Tobago, there has been a long term upward trend in the murder rate for decades. The latest upturn started in 1999 — the year of the hangings. The murder rate went up 29 percent, and by 26 percent in 2001, when the then prime minister was personally responsible for National Security. Then there was a change of government. The murder rate increased by 13 percent in 2002. This year, if present trends continue, the rate will be around 220 murders, which would mean a 29 percent increase on last year’s total.

Fear of death does not seem to deter violent crime. In Jamaica, over 600 suspected bandits have been shot dead by police or licensed firearm holders, in gun battles or otherwise, since 1999. What is going wrong across the Caribbean? It does have something to do with drugs — users going off the rails and killing each other, small-time dealers fighting for turf, and the big boys subverting the protective services. It does have something to do with gang rivalries, with increased numbers of guns, and with the deportees. Drugs, gangs, guns and even deportees have been around since at least the late 1980s. Jamaica’s crime rate has been on a ghastly plateau for longer than that — but in the rest of the region, it is the last three or four years that have brought that extra twist that is not easy to understand.