Failure of the State to understand crime

When a day marked without a murder becomes an anomaly, it should be clear to the citizenry that the approach to crime is not working.

No matter what party is in power, the strategies addressing crime have always been heavily rooted in the use of force. The idea that one can police a population into shape seems to be an easy solution, but why isn’t it working? Perhaps the best example of the State’s use of force is the 2011 state of emergency (SoE). Retrospectively, the SoE embodied many of the misinterpretations and failures seen to this day. That same year, Dr Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith produced a lecture focusing on crime and security within the Caribbean.

At the time, the impact of the SoE was shrouded in uncertainty.

However, particular scrutiny was placed on the “hotspot” phenomenon.

Unsurprisingly, these areas — considered to be rife with crime — coincided with many of the underdeveloped, urban communities that have suffered decades of neglect by the State.

Such a revelation would indicate that a fitting response to these communities should address these problems. However, the SoE was a vastly different approach.

As per tradition and our political culture, long-term measures were shirked for the need to gain political mileage. Thus, the answer to rising crime was State violence in its flashiest form.

The government of the day justified this use of force by asserting criminals were “at war with law-abiding” citizens. Therefore, these measures were appropriate and even laudable.

This approach continued to validate the feeling that these hotspot communities were completely constituted of criminals and undesirables — eroding empathy and encouraging fellow citizens to turn a blind eye as their peers were brutalised. By framing the SoE as “limited,” the “law-abiding” citizens in other communities could rest assured they would only be slightly inconvenienced.

The State fails the citizenry when systemic and structural causes of crime are continuously overlooked in favour of methods involving ideological and physical violence.

This alienates communities and does nothing to address underlying social inequalities that numerous scholars like Griffith have highlighted as factors contributing to crime.

Lip service may be paid to social programmes that can “help” underdeveloped communities, but many of these are short-lived and many are rife with corruption.

The Ministry of National Security still receives more funding than health, agriculture and housing — illustrating that priorities still lie with the use of force over addressing the ways in which inequality permeates these institutions and feeds into crime.

Almost six years have passed since the SoE. The approach to crime and governance has not changed, even if the government has. No substantial thought has been paid to the long-term improvement of communities that are rife with unemployment, poverty and violence. The token response to crime is simple, predictable and all-too-familiar — so too is the result.

To remedy this, the State must admit its role in propagating inequality and abandon the short-sighted use of brute force on those created by this climate.

Unless the State becomes willing to point the finger at itself for its neglect, the use of further violence via policing will continue to be an attractive “solution” to crime.

The roots of criminality run deep within our society. They cannot be destroyed without understanding where they came from. In doing so, we may finally accept that we cannot just police these problems away.

Tori Sinanan via email