The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

THE government is still reviewing existing programmes to see if they meet the country’s needs with respect to crime reduction, National Security Minister Marvin Dames said yesterday.

His statement came as he toured the Department of Correctional Services for the first time in his new post.

It also came after the country recorded four murders in four days.

“When we entered into office a few weeks ago we started an aggressive plan of trying to assess where it is we are at,” he told the press. “Just this morning prior to going into Parliament I spent the morning with the commissioner and his crime team just having them share with me their strategy and how does that mesh with our policy of visibility, police enforcement and ensuring Bahamians in our communities are safe. We spent some time looking at the statistics for this year, looking critically at where these incidents are occurring, time of day, day of week, and getting an understanding from the commissioner and his team as to their role in ensuring that we do more to reduce the level of crime.

“Everyone says it’s not a police responsibility, not totally a police responsibility, the reduction of crime. But our government now is looking at some of the current existing programmes and trying to see whether they are relevant and if they are not relevant we are looking at introducing some new programmes that can be relevant and maybe fine-tuning the existing programmes to ensure that they meet the needs of the people of this country.

“We have begun introducing some short-term measures that hopefully will begin reaping some positive results. Still, those long-term measures that will help bring the crime to a manageable place are important.”

Asked to elaborate on the short-term measures being employed, Mr Dames stressed the importance of police visibility and patrol of crime hotspots.

“You will begin to see a change coming after my meetings,” he said. “We have some fixing to do in all of these (law enforcement) organisations. It won’t be overnight. We need to determine what is the establishment of all of these organisations.”

The latest murder occurred Wednesday morning after a woman was stabbed in her house during a suspected domestic incident.

Three more people were killed — one in Acklins —over the holiday period.