Victim blaming and fight against crime

By their continuing failure to detect and arrest people responsible for criminal acts, the Police Service is in fact responsible to a certain extent for the high levels of criminal activity, whether in or out of the bedroom.

The deterrent value of a properly resourced police force must be taken into consideration as a crime prevention strategy. In this regard, so-called “domestic crimes,” like other types of crime, can be prevented to a certain extent if the State apparatus was so constructed as to effectively detect, arrest and convict perpetrators.

Do the crime and you will certainly do the time.

This responsibility extends to the State, as the employer of the police, and thus the State, as represented by the Government and the Opposition, can indeed be held primarily responsible for the high levels of criminal activity in TT . This responsibility or culpability also extends to the high level of road traffic accidents and subsequent casualties on our nation’s roadways.

By failing to properly police the roads, to erect crash barriers along the full length of the medians of our highways, to purchase more speed guns and other detection devices, such as cameras, and by failing to arrest people for vehicular manslaughter, the State is also fundamentally responsible for the many deaths on the roads as well.

The practice of victim blaming is the typical response therefore of an impotent authority, which seeks to shirk its responsibility for the actions needed to help deter lawlessness.

In such a scenario victims are presented in some subtle or even overt way as deserving their fate, partially or fully.

The media also play into this “game” by the manner in which they choose to describe victims and report stories, eg: “He was known to the police.” The posting of social media photos of victims, especially in suggestive clothing, also conveys a subtle message: “She look for she thing, you ain’t see how she dress.” In these ways we try, with the help of the media, to “comfort” ourselves that this was a “deserving’ victim. Thus it’s not so bad that they died or was raped is what we say unconsciously or even consciously to ourselves.

Murder is murder, rape is rape.

The labelling of some crimes as “domestic” or “gang related” are simply strategies or “word games”, designed to reduce the significance of such crimes in people’s minds and thus the seriousness of these acts.

The strategy is one also that relieves the perpetrator of the act of full responsibility for his decision to commit a violent act.

As the country seeks to grapple with an ever spiralling crime rate and road traffic fatalities, we must be careful to avoid victim blaming as a strategy to comfort ourselves that those people who are being hurt, assaulted, raped, robbed and killed share responsibility for their fate.

Victim blaming is the easy way out and essentially is the path of cowardice in dealing with crime and other distressing social evils.

Michael Jattan president, Heswatt