Conviction rate

Oxford University criminologist Roger Hood last Wednesday unveiled a report which showed the dismal detection rate of murders in this country. According to Professor Hood, only five percent of the 633 killings from 1998 to 2002 resulted in a conviction for murder, with another 17 percent for manslaughter. But even this low figure became lower when gang-related murders were isolated — for this kind of murder, there was only a one percent conviction rate. Indeed, Hood revealed that in 82 percent of the gang murders, police didn’t even have a suspect to charge.

Professor Hood also did a racial breakdown of murder convictions, saying that in cases where an Indo-Trinidadian killed another Indo-Trinidadian, a murder conviction was four times more likely to be convicted than cases where an Afro-Trinidadian killed an Afro-Trinidadian. But this only shows the danger of importing foreign concepts and applying them to societies where they are not relevant. The difference in murder convictions has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with culture. Most murders in the Indo-Trinidadian community are domestic; most murders in the Afro-Trinidadian community are gang-related. The former type of murder does not really require detective work, hence the higher conviction rate.

Also suspect was Professor Hood’s conclusion about the mandatory death penalty. “At the end of a very lengthy and expensive process, very few mandatory death sentences have been upheld,” he said, asserting that capital punishment system was not working in this country. This may be so, but the conclusion is not a logical deduction from Professor Hood’s study. Is he saying that a discretionary system would be more effective? If so, the assumption is that jurors and judges are reluctant to give a verdict of murder, as compared to manslaughter, because it means that the defendant must be hanged. But nothing in the survey justifies this conclusion and, in any case, local polls have consistently shown that a majority of the public are in favour of the death penalty. However, Professor Hood’s study was funded in part by an organisation called the Death Penalty Project, whose aim is to eliminate capital punishment: and, even in academia, the piper plays for who pays.

But such proselytising is unnecessary, since there is ample evidence that the death penalty does not reduce the murder rate. The counter-argument is often made that this is because the odds of a gang member dying on the street are higher than the odds of him dying on Death Row. But, if this is so, then making the death penalty a deterrent would require hanging two or more persons a day. Is this the road we want to tread?

Professor Hood’s study would have been more useful if it had identified possible causes for the steep increase in the murder rate since 1998. Within five years, this country’s murder rate has risen from under 19 per 100,000 to 30 per 100,000. Such a rapid increase suggests specific changes in social conditions and/ or the introduction of specific incentives for murder. But what could these factors be? Did the cohort of urban, poor males between the ages of 16 and 24 — a key indicator for violence — increase within the past five years? Or did a change in the disbursement of URP monies provide a breeding ground for killers? Or was there a change in the leadership structure of drug traffickers?

These are the questions that must be answered if we are to make a start in reducing the country’s murder rate. Unfortunately, Professor Hood’s study provides no assistance here.