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April 2010
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Students represent at Criminal Justice Sciences MeetingBy Keron King
Many students at the Campus are engaged in various kinds of research, ranging from policing; juvenile crime and delinquency; youth gangs; the sex, drugs and guns trade; white collar crime; restorative justice and prison research. It augurs well for deeper understanding and academic solutions to our present dilemma. Had Ken Pryce (arguably the first Caribbean Criminologist) been alive today, he would have been overjoyed at the rate at which the students at the St. Augustine Campus have answered his 1979 call for a Caribbean Criminology, and the resulting thrust for a theoretical school in this area. This year three UWI graduate students answered the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences’ (ACJS) call for papers to their annual Criminal Justice Sciences meeting. Every year the ACJS hosts this meeting/conference where academics from around the world share contemporary scholarly work on criminology and criminal justice. This year’s February meeting, “Beyond Our Boundaries: The Inclusivity of Criminal Justice Sciences,” in San Diego, California, USA, featured three local presentations. Sandra Romany, a Master of Philosophy student in Governance and Public Policy, presented her work on the “Challenges of Developing a National Threat Assessment for Caribbean Islands: The Case of Trinidad and Tobago.” She argued that Trinidad and Tobago needs a “Drug Threat Assessment” to help unearth the depth of the drug situation and enable relevant authorities to strategically deploy resources. She lamented that official reports have indicated that Trinidad and Tobago’s official drug reporting and drug-use database are deficient. This would present a major challenge to developing and implementing this drug threat assessment. Nevertheless, it is a step in the right direction that Sandra is examining our drug situation and looking for practical solutions. Wendell Wallace, a PhD. student in Criminology and Criminal Justice, examined the relationship between tourism and crime in Tobago, his home land. Wendell’s data indicated that the influx of tourists into the island was positively correlated to an increase in crime. His presentation sparked a lively debate as panelists and the audience pondered whether tourists were the perpetrators or victims of these crimes. Many wondered if these crimes were related to property, drug or sexual offences. All agreed that this line of research needs to be continued as it promises to paint a statistical picture of crime in Tobago for the first time. My presentation examined policing in East Port of Spain. I argued that the para-militaristic style of policing characteristic during the colonial era has become a distinguishing feature of modern policing in the urban centers of our nation. I contended that this style of policing facilitates violent street crime in these same areas. This presentation highlighted data from a questionnaire I developed along the lines of Jamaican Criminologist, Professor Anthony Harriot’s theorizing of the para-militaristic style of policing. Officers surveyed believed that para-militarism, as defined by Harriot, is an effective way of policing. Research of this nature promises to provide a profile of the officers inclined to para-militaristic policing as well as to make way for a more peacemaking approach to policing. In our aim to be true to Ken Pryce’s call for a Caribbean Criminology, Dr. Dianne Williams, Criminology Lecturer and Coordinator of the Unit for Social Problem Analysis and Policy Development (USPAP) chaired a roundtable discussion titled “Developing a Caribbean Criminology.” She provided an overview of our crime situation, challenged the efficacy of many North American and European theories to effectively explain our situation and suggested very practical solutions to our crime quandary. Subsequently, Wendell and I, along with other audience members discussed policing and the juvenile justice system. The exposure and the opportunity to share our academic work with the rest of the world were phenomenal. The experience renewed and invigorated our resolve to play our part to save T&T through academic research and practical solutions. |
It is no secret that the crime rate in Trinidad and Tobago is cause for concern. Levels of the fear of crime are arguably spiraling out of control and the whole notion of safety and security is, unfortunately, being compromised with every passing day. Mindful of this, students at the UWI, St. Augustine Campus have taken up the challenge to tackle crime from an academic standpoint; hoping that their research will help to alleviate the problem.