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May 2009
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The keynote speakers were the immediate past Director for the Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice, Professor Ramesh Deosaran and the first Commonwealth/ UNESCO Regional Chair in Education (HIV Health Promotion), Professor David Plummer.
Gender and Crime Many presentations connected the high level of street crimes to “machismo.” Prof Plummer defined machismo as the male’s desire to prove his manhood by violence. He recommended holistic education that emphasises that violence does not equate to manliness, and that education is not a female “thing,” as a likely solution. Public and Police Ethnographic and survey research show a high level of distrust between the public and the police. Members of the public believe that the police’s response time is slow and their overall honesty questionable. Prof Deosaran said citizens fear retaliation when they report crimes. Recommendations included a democratic policing strategy, a system for citizen feedback, courteous police and community policing. Crimes against Children Some contended that there is a relationship between being victimised as a child and being a perpetrator of crime as an adult. Others simply drew attention to the paucity of legislation to protect the rights of the child. All agreed that increased child protection was necessary and needs State and academic attention. Penal Reform Presenters suggested overhauling the penal system, which was described as archaic and counterproductive and failing to rehabilitate prisoners while in fact producing criminals because of its environment. A proposal to adopt a restorative justice model was recommended by Dr Dianne Williams, Assistant Professor at North Carolina A&T State University. Ironically, a Cabinet-appointed Task Force on Penal Reform and Transformation agreed to adopt a similar proposal in 2002, as the ideal concept to guide penal policy and practice in Trinidad and Tobago. To date it is unclear as to what level this has been implemented. Guns, Drugs and Gang-related Activity Tahereh Mirsadoo, an Asst Professor of Islamic Azad University, Iran, related the detrimental impact of drugs in her country. She provided statistics regarding the correlation between criminal activity and the increasing cost of keeping addicts incarcerated. She identified some measures used to alleviate these social ills, such as treatment centres, guidance counselling, youth employment and informative mass media advertisements. Mr Darius Figueria, an Assistant Lecturer at UWI, and Dr Thomas Bruneau, Lecturer at the Civil-Military Relations, Naval Post Graduate School of Monterey, California, warned of a shift in Central American gang activity to the Caribbean, a trend that Mr Figueria believes we may be unable to control. Prof Plummer refuted this, suggesting that we could intervene by empowering the region’s young men to refrain from a life of what he termed “gangsterism.” Prof Onwubiko Agozino, Coordinator of the UWI Criminology Unit, briefly noted that youth in Caribbean societies are better behaved than those in the United States and the United Kingdom. He added though, that Caribbean youth seem to lack the positive community influences needed to keep them safe from illegal drug use, trafficking and criminal gang activity. He suggested decriminalising drugs and using education to help youth to say no to drugs as is the case with tobacco and alcohol. Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Model A plea was made by Inspector McDonald Jacob of the Crime and Problem Analysis Branch (CAPA) of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) for the adoption of a (UCR) model. He lamented that crime reporting was not unified throughout the region and proposed that this be changed. Ms Kim Ramsay, Senior Research Officer, at the National Task Force on Crime Prevention in Barbados applauded the proposal and admitted that the Barbadian Police Force suffered from crime reporting inconsistencies. Dr Nathan Pino, a Fulbright scholar based at UWI’s Criminology Unit, proposed a more democratic way of policing based on his interviews with members of Trinidad and Tobago’s society. He suggested a radical system where the police are in “subordination to civil authority” and the “people and their elected representatives dictate police plans and behaviours.” One trend that permeated most presentations was the need for the State, civil society and The UWI to join hands in addressing crime, security and justice issues. The proceedings of the Conference will be released either in the form of a book or as a journal article.
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