Risk Factors and Determinants of Crime and Insecurity in Trinidad and Tobago
| Author | Randy Seepersad/Dianne Williams |
| Profession | Criminologist in the Department of Behavioural Sciences at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago/Coordinator of the Unit for Social Problems Analysis and Policy Development (USPAP) |
| Pages | 104-137 |
This chapter will examine some of the main risk factors which
have been identiied by past criminological research and theorizing as
important for understanding criminal offending and insecurity. This will
be followed by an assessment of research in Trinidad and Tobago which
has focused on risk factors, and will conclude with an examination of the
indings of existing primary data
Human insecurity in the Caribbean region has not declined despite
the commitment of a vast amount of resources and the implementation
of a range of policies to address crime and violence. It is a fundamental
assumption of this chapter that crime policy must be data driven, and
must be informed by a systematic understanding of the root causes of
crime. Failure to do so will result in the continued implementation of
populist policies; those which help ruling parties gain political mileage,
but which may be based on public opinion rather than on empirical
data Too often governments tailor their crime reduction policies to it
popular notions of what works. These popular notions may be based
on media headlines and ‘pop psychology’ which have very little, if any,
grounding in criminological theory and research. All too often, short-
term policies which promise quick ixes are preferred to longterm efforts
to ight crime This same tendency to prefer quick ixes and to bend to
public will also serves to distort those crimeighting efforts which are
grounded in empirical research. Policy as it is formulated and policy as
it is implemented, may be two very different things. Crime trends in the
Caribbean region speak volumes about the failure of such approaches.
Indeed, for the most part, in the case of Trinidad and Tobago, serious
crimes have risen over the last 20 years, though there have been modest
declines within recent times. Any government which is serious about
addressing the crime situation has to be willing to move away from citing
shortterm luctuations in crime as evidence that crime has decreased
Such governments need to be willing to acknowledge that past efforts
have failed, and must be willing to make policy decisions which are not
always consistent with popular sentiment.
Risk Factors and Determinants
of Crime and Insecurity in
Trinidad and Tobago
105Risk Factors and Determinants of Crime
This chapter contends that in order to effectively ight crime and
insecurity in the Caribbean, at least two conditions must be met. Firstly,
a thorough examination of criminological literature must be conducted to
identify the major causes of crime and insecurity and secondly, empirical
data from the Caribbean must be examined to determine which of the
main causal factors are applicable to the Caribbean region generally, and
to Trinidad and Tobago speciically Not all of the factors indicated by the
international literature may be applicable to the Caribbean and indeed,
it may be the case that different factors may be applicable to different
countries within the Caribbean. Knowledge of these factors will indicate
where emphasis must be placed in order to reduce human insecurity.
In examining the causes of crime and insecurity, researchers distinguish
between the levels of aggregation at which the causal variables are
operative. Some researchers argue that effective crime reduction policies
must be focused at the aggregate level (for example, nation, state, city
or community) while others argue that interventions must be focused
at the level of the individual, or on smaller units such as the family. An
example which illustrates the issue with the level of aggregation relates
to poverty reduction as a means of reducing crime. While there is
some debate about whether or not poverty causes crime, a number of
researchers have found a relationship between poverty and crime rates.
This relationship has been found at the aggregate level for cities (Bailey
1984; Flango and Sherbanou 1976), standard metropolitan statistical
areas (Blau and Golden 1986; DeFonzo 1983; Fowles and Merva 1996),
and countries (Gartner 1990; Sigelman and Simpson 1977). These studies
suggest that poverty interventions should be aimed at the aggregate level,
though the researchers disagree on which level of aggregation may be
most appropriate. In contrast, other researchers have looked at variations
among people in their level of poverty and level of self-reported criminal
offending (Krahn and Harrison 1992; Stiles et al. 2000). These latter studies
suggest that interventions should be directed at the individual level. As
such, while it is typically agreed that poverty reduction should reduce
crime and insecurity, researchers disagree on the most appropriate level
at which interventions should be applied. The main idea being brought
out here is that policymakers must be aware that some causal factors may
operate at one level of analysis while other causal factors may operate at
another level of analysis. To be effective, interventions must be aimed at
the appropriate level of analysis which is relevant to each causal factor.
Where there are disagreements on the most appropriate level of analysis,
an examination of empirical data should provide the best indication of the
level at which interventions may be most cost-effectively applied.
106 CRIME & SECURITY
Economic Deprivation
A number of researchers have found that economic deprivation is
causally linked to criminal offending. This is not to say that all economically
deprived people will commit crime, nor does it imply that all types of
crime are driven by economic deprivation. The literature on economic
deprivation and crime has conceptualized economic deprivation as
poverty, inequality, or relative deprivation. Poverty refers to the non-
attainment of basic nutritional and other non-nutritional requirements
which are considered essential to a healthy productive life. The poverty
line is speciic to particular locations and is deined according to the cost
required to meet these basic needs in that speciic location The nutritional
threshold below which a person is likely to suffer ill health varies from
place to place, depending on climate and other such factors. The World
Bank deines this threshold for the Caribbean region as a daily intake of
2,400 calories per adult. People who do not earn enough income to meet
their basic nutritional requirements are termed indigent.
Inequality, typically assessed at the aggregate level of analysis (for
example, inequality between countries, states, cities, neighbourhoods,
etc is often measured by the Gini coeficient which computes the
disparity in average incomes among a distribution of incomes among the
relevant units of analysis. High levels of inequality indicate that there are
large disparities between the incomes of the rich and the poor. Relative
deprivation refers to the perception of inequality. Perceptual measures
are restricted to the individual level of analysis, though some authors
argue that perceptions can be inferred from structural indicators (see, for
example, Davies 1962; Gurr 1970; Rosenfeld 1986). Relative deprivation
researchers argue that the perception of inequality may be very much at
odds with measures of inequality based on objective data such as income
since, typically, people are unaware of such objective data for others and
are thus not in a position to make accurate comparisons. These researchers
contend that people’s perceptions of economic deprivation impact upon
their behaviour and that such measures form an important complement
to measures based on objective data.
Researchers have typically argued in favour of either poverty, inequality
or relative deprivation as important causes of crime. In defending the
utility of the preferred measure, researchers typically try to explain
why the chosen measure is causally linked to crime and why the other
measures are not causally linked. This controversy is fuelled in part by
the fact that each measure has received some level of empirical support.
For example, Beverly Stiles et al. (2000) and William Bailey (1984) found
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