True Criminals

Bandits hold up a taxi driver and shoot him in the head before robbing the passengers. Other bandits put an ex-President’s bodyguard to lie down on the ground and shoot him five times. Gang members shoot other gang members in the back: no honour, clearly, among thieves. But if you say that these individuals are not human, then you betray your ignorance of human nature. Human beings, like all species, are self-interested organisms. Everything we do can be traced back to two fundamental drives: survival and reproduction. If, in the environment we evolved in over two million years ago, there were ancestral individuals who put others’ survival and others’ reproduction ahead of their own, then those individuals failed to leave their genes behind. This does not mean that human beings are entirely selfish creatures. We are, after all, the most social species on the planet: and it often happens that the most effective strategy for survival and reproduction is to be nice to others. Even then, however, niceness is usually confined to members of one’s own group: whether that group is defined by physical features, religious beliefs, neighbourhood, nationality or what-have-you. But the strategies we use for survival and reproduction are very often shaped by environmental cues.

This is the basic reason why men are far more aggressive than women. In most species, males compete for mates and females choose mate: usually, the winners of the competitions. Humans are no different. For a man, status is the key to reproduction, because women favour high-status males. Men, on the other hand, favour women who are attractive and youthful: both traits being fertility indicators. Men achieve status through wealth and power and influence. But if such paths are not open to them, they are driven to find other means: which usually means violence, for this is the only device they have for getting “respeck” and, by extension, mates. “The combination of maleness, youth, penury, hopelessness, and anarchy makes young men indefinitely reckless in defending their reputation,” explains Steven Pinker in his book How the Mind Works. This is the basic profile of the individuals who have sent Trinidad and Tobago’s murder rate soaring. But theory can only be our starting-point. The question we must ask is: What environmental factors have caused these criminals to become so ruthless? After all, it used to be that robbers would shoot their victims only if they resisted. Now they seem to be shooting even before the robbery, and shooting to kill.

Several commentators have linked this murderous upsurge to the 1990 coup attempt and Abu Bakr. But, while I think there is a track to be traced, I do not think that it is a straight path. In my view, the genesis of the present violence is not the coup attempt per se, but the hansy-pansy Basdeo Panday and Patrick Manning played with Bakr thereafter. Bakr, you may recall, was one of the first persons to be granted an interview with Panday after he assumed the Prime Ministership in 1996. Panday later explained, “I have to meet with everyone.” But the real reason, of course, was the UNC leadership felt it worthwhile to ally themselves with Bakr in order to win votes. It seems that, by 2000 if not before, the PNM embraced a similar perspective. After coming into power, Manning first wanted to give the Jamaat-al-Muslimeen the land at Mucurapo, and his administration has never tried to execute the court judgment for the money owed to them by Bakr and the Jamaat. Manning’s infamous meeting with “community leaders,” and the profile of his erstwhile personal driver, suggests that he has no problem cosying up to shady characters. How does this kind of behaviour affect crime? Criminals, like all other individuals, pay attention to the successful persons of their group.

That Bakr is a multi-millionaire would not, by itself, have sparked off a crime wave after the 1990 coup attempt, for that would have been perceived as a political, rather than strictly criminal, act. Even the fact that Bakr got off scot-free would not necessarily have had any impact on ordinary criminal activities. But when, in the aftermath, Bakr was not only allowed to flout the law (by not paying the court judgment), and when businessmen began using the Muslimeen as debt collectors, and when other Jamaat members began to be known as criminals, and when media commentators from Keith Smith to Keith Shepherd to Umbala to Gladiator began treating Bakr as an authority on our society — well, Bakr and his followers naturally became exemplars for criminals. Crime became a rational method for achieving not merely wealth, but status: for Bakr was hobnobbing with the highest in the land and even had a Priority Bus Route pass. That supposed exemplars like Canon Knolly Clarke and other religious leaders happily appeared on a panel with Bakr helped confirm that crime does indeed pay. But how does the average criminal achieve such success? They know they cannot do what Bakr did, if only because they don’t want to wear the white gown and pray five times a day.

But, among people who make their living through crime, status is achieved through toughness. Hence the upsurge in violent crime: the robber has more status than the burglar, the murderer has more status than the kidnapper, and the cold-blooded killer has the highest status of all. So the criminals who kill without compunction are not acting irrationally: they know that this is the way to gain status and, perhaps, even be invited to work for the big boys, respectable and otherwise. If my analysis is correct, it means that all attempts to fight crime will be futile unless the people at the top change their strategies. In the first instance, this means that Patrick Manning will have to make the enforcement of the court judgment a key issue. In the second instance, it means that business people must be forced to stop using criminals as debt collectors. And in the third instance, it means that prominent persons must shun Bakr by not appearing at events organised by the Muslimeen. The causes of crime, you see, do not ultimately stem from criminals. This is because most criminals come from poor and deprived environments. The nature of a society must, logically, be shaped by those who wield power and influence. So when you have to identify this country’s true criminals, don’t look to Laventille. Look to Whitehall and Westmoorings.

E-mail: kbaldeosingh@hotmail.com
Website: www.caribscape.com/baldeosingh