Preface

• Author: Ramesh Deosaran
• Profession: Director of the Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice at The University of the West Indies, St Augustine
• Pages: 17-22

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CRIME, DELINQUENCY AND JUSTICE

preface

The state of crime, delinquency and justice across the Caribbean has become

increasingly problematic in the last 20 years. Among the major reasons are

ineffective policing and judicial institutions, weak law enforcement, crimes and

violence driven by drug trafficking, technologically-driven crimes, poor

policymaking, lack of relevant research and analysis, low-control homes and

families, fragmented, uncivil communities, value conflict, socioeconomic

disparities, and for youths especially, an environment clouded by visions of hate,

conflict and violence.

Governments in the Caribbean, almost all now independent for 40 or so years,

are now in a tailspin. The widening option they now choose for rescue is to hire

police and security teams mainly from the United Kingdom and the United States.

Part of the irony in the current outsourcing of national security by Caribbean

governments is linked to the fact that during the negotiations with the British

government for political independence these governments, especially the Trinidad

and Tobago one, insisted on having executive control over the police service.

What all this essentially means is that the region was not well prepared for this

‘crime crisis.’ In fact, governments did respond, sporadically and briskly, but

mainly with short-term, quickened law enforcement measures, leaving behind

most of the fundamental reasons why crime, delinquency and violence have

occurred and why they will reoccur, and this at great cost, financially, socially

and psychologically. Public policy fell far short of the challenges.

What this Caribbean Reader seeks to do for the region is to create an opportunity

for reflection, a platform for further research and analysis, and a bridge to

policymakers. There are still some gaps we hope to fill soon in another publication.

Among these are white-collar crime, crime and the media, cyber-crime, deportees,

environmental crime and feminism and crime. The 30 papers in this Reader have

been selected from several sources, many of them from the fourth International

Conference on Crime and Justice in the Caribbean sponsored by the Centre for

Criminology and Criminal Justice at the St Augustine Campus, The University of

the West Indies, Trinidad. Some papers have been taken from the Caribbean Journal

of Criminology and Social Psychology. A few have been specially prepared for this

Reader.

From the search for indigenous explanations and solutions in the early papers

to some hard data in the later papers, the Reader goes as far back as l976 with the

late Ken Pryce paper on the outlines of what I will call ‘rebellious criminology.’

Ramesh Deosaran