A Caribbean Portrait of Crime, Justice and Community Policing

• Author: Ramesh Deosaran
• Pages: 241-264

241

A CARIBBEAN PORTRAIT OF CRIME, JUSTICE AND COMMUNITY POLICING

INTRODUCTION

This paper highlights some of the major

issues in crime and justice now sharply

confronting the Caribbean and which are

likely to increase in severity in the coming

years if the appropriate conceptual,

operational and accounting strategies are not

quickly put in place. It then briefly describes

the caution echoed by several prominent

Caribbean Commissioners of Police

regarding the importation of ‘foreign

practices’ into Caribbean policing. Though

admitting a range of bureaucratic and

cultural obstacles, this paper seeks to provide

some optimism and forward thinking for

community policing in the Caribbean.1

A three-pronged ‘way forward’ formula

for capacity building is provided but

pessimism strikes again when the paper

provides some evidence to suggest that the

fate of community policing in the Caribbean

is and will be stifled by the pressures for

rugged law enforcement and ‘quick

government action.’ Community policing,

as this paper notes, does carry a package of

seductive concepts and language but its

successful implementation has not always

been as convincing as promised. A lot more

work and commitment are needed. As is

now being asked in the United States (US)

itself, we too now ask for the Caribbean: Is

community policing more fiction than fact?

A Caribbean

Portrait of

Crime, Justice

and Community

Policing

Ramesh Deosaran

Eleven

242

CRIME, DELINQUENCY AND JUSTICE

KEY REGIONAL ISSUES IN CRIME AND JUSTICE

This first part will provide a quick overview of the key issues now affecting

the Caribbean region and which, apart from ‘traditional’ crimes, show strong

signs of becoming much more serious in the years ahead. Here we will also argue

the case for treating the Caribbean as its own region and not be subsumed within

or along with Latin America in reports dealing with crime, social or economic

data. We will present a brief for the way forward in treating with crime and justice

in the Caribbean.

Far too often, data on social and economic indicators in the Caribbean falls

under the broad category, ‘Latin American and the Caribbean.’ The Caribbean is,

however, a far different place from Latin America in terms of, for example, culture,

political and legal systems, and even trading patterns. Therefore, when data is

grossly subsumed under the general category of ‘Latin American and the

Caribbean,’ it gives a distorted profile of regional trends, the causes for such trends

and in particular, the targeted solutions required for needy areas.

All in all, the Caribbean region carries about 20 votes at the United Nations

(UN). The time has come for international bodies such as the World Bank and the

agencies of the UN in particular, to treat the Caribbean as its own category for

social, economic and crime data.

Even so, however, a determination will have to be made about which part or

parts of the Caribbean will comprise ‘the Caribbean’ for such data compilation.

For such a purpose, it is quite convenient to count the data from those states

which comprise the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), that is, the 15 Caribbean

countries, most with British traditions. This will include Jamaica starting from

the north, through Barbados and The Bahamas, to Trinidad and Tobago and

Guyana in the south of the Caribbean Sea.

Among the key issues now affecting this region are:

(1) Their trans-shipment location. Increasingly, the data show that some of these

Caribbean states are being used as trans-shipment points for illegal drugs

(cocaine) shipped to North America and Europe. There has been a very

significant increase from l990 to 2002 (for example, UNODC reports). At

the same time, illegal arms are being shipped into these countries at

increasing rates. In June 2002, Trinidad and Tobago’s prime minister publicly

stated that the rise in the entry of illegal arms from South America to Trinidad

and Tobago was contributing to the rise in serious crimes in this country.

All in all, therefore, it is in the mutual interest of the Caribbean, the United

States and Europe, to work out mutually beneficial agreements and security

treaties to reduce these illegal drugs-arms flow. Such flows and their

consequences make all connected regions vulnerable. In this sense, the

Caribbean occupies a very strategic location. This matter is now high on