Crime and Violence in CARICOM

Mervyn Claxton

22/02/2011

Opinión

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An article in last week's Economist, entitled "In the shadow of the gallows: Trinidad debates the death penalty" http://www.economist.com/node/18114940 underlines the widespread sentiment of people throughout the region that the death penality should be reinstated. The Article states that Trinidad and tobago "suffered 472 killings last year—close to 5% of all deaths. In 1999 there were just 93. Almost everyone can name a friend or relative who has met a violent end. Last year’s murder rate, of 36 per 100,000 people, was seven times that in the United States and 30 times that of Britain. But it trailed Jamaica (53), Belize (42) and tiny St Kitts-Nevis (40)."

It is a very serious problem which concerns the Caricom region as a whole. The T&T's prime minister reportedly promised to remove legal obstacles to hanging, and slated a parliamentary debate on the issue yesterday, February 18th. The Economist suggests that public anger at the extremely high level of violence in T&T is running so high that the government should have little difficulty in having a constitutional amendment adopted (albeit requiring a three-quarter's majority) to overcome a key obstacle, posed by past Privy Council rulings, to effectively implementing that policy.

Interestingly, according to the Economist, "Many politicians privately admit that hanging will not halt crime". The death penalty, will prove to be no more of a deterrent to potential murderers than it has in other countries throughout the world.

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Concerned individuals, academics, professionals in all disciplines, and civil society organizations should engage in a wide-ranging, purposeful, solution-oriented dialogue with the objective of identifying pragmatic, feasible policy actions that could be taken at the national and regional levels. Based on what emerges from that dialogue, a consensus should be sought on the proposals to be submitted to individual governments and regional authorities. Those proposals and the fact that they have been formally submitted to governments and regional authorities should be widely publicized for the benefit of public in Caricom countries, who would almost certainly give them their wholehearted support. ith such public support, no Caricom government would dare to ignore the consensus proposals. Indeed, governing politicians would probably do everything possible to implement them with the minimal delay. The implementation of the proposals should be closely monitored by the civil society, individuals and groups who had put them forward.

Read the complete article here:

Source: http://www.normangirvan.info/

https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/147759