Perspectives

Writing in a newspaper, just before returning from Germany, Captain Dwight Yorke was cautiously positive when he penned, “the information reaching me is that during our absence there wasn’t much crime as everyone was following the Warriors. I deeply apologise to the public for not staying on longer. Anything we can do to help solve the problem of crime we will do.”

Although the entire population of Trinidad and Tobago knows full well that Captain Dwight Yorke and his Warriors stayed on as long as possible in the first round, working feverishly towards the next, we have to work with them to convert that national commitment, pride and resilience to disabuse the minds of the most vulnerable of our youths from the attraction of a life of crime and completely opposite values.

What has not copycatted our Soca Warriors is the result of a 1998-2002 study by Trinidadian researcher Dr Florence Seemungal and Oxford University’s Roger Hood entitled “Conviction for Murder, the Mandatory Death Penalty and the Reality of Homicide in Trinidad and Tobago.”

Amongst the important findings of that study are:-

(i)A 44% failure of prosecutions for murder, either through the prosecution abandoning its case or through the jury acquitting the defendant;(ii)Where the prosecutions for murder resulted in a conviction, the latter was more likely to be one for manslaughter as opposed to murder;(iii)The overall very low rate of conviction for murder in relation to the total of their number recorded by the Police and especially when related to the estimated number of those who might have committed them, it could be said that the majority of the perpetrators simply get away with sheer murder; and (iv)Even among those arrested, charged and found to have a case to answer, are hardly likely to be found guilty of murder, as only one in five of them ever do.

In our opinion, the study is a damning indictment of the intelligence-gathering capabilities, detection processes, crime-scene investigations and apprehension methods of law enforcement authorities. Flowing from this, the results of the study are not encouraging in terms of the prosecutorial ability of the Court and Process branch of the Police Service and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, explaining why the conviction rate can only be 11%, according to information coming from the very Service.

The Chamber has repeatedly stressed, together with the Organisations Representative of the Private Sector (ORPSTT), that this is totally unacceptable from a Government which continually claims to have placed crime on the front burner as a national issue when statistics like these demonstrate otherwise. The private sector has repeatedly called for the replacement of Police Prosecutors by Attorneys-at-Law competent in the criminal arena and the equipping of the Office of the DPP with resources of equal, if not greater, competence than those who represent the accused. At this continuing rate, crime is bound to be paying and making nonsense of the punishment process.

Every time the Minister of National Security or members of the Police Service have an opportunity to say anything publicly about detection and conviction, the appeal is for information, intelligence gathering and assistance from the communities in which the particular crime has occurred. The Chamber’s response is that public access to Crime Stoppers and lately, 555, address this and we must all continue to ensure that they work and work efficiently and competently.