The Tribune

A LOCAL community activist has called for a shift in the way the country deals with crime following a rise in killings last year.

Two people have already been killed in the new year after a couple was shot to death on Monday as they slept in a Montell Heights home.

In an interview with The Tribune yesterday, Dr Carlos Reid, a consultant to the Ministry of National Security, thinks the country’s crime crisis is a result of several root issues, adding that there are not enough resources dedicated to the prevention, intervention, and rehabilitation.

He deemed preventive measures as a vital part of tackling the matter, adding that individuals must be adequately prepared to face the reality of failure.

“We need to start raising up the kind of citizens that we basically want to see, so we have to go back to the basics,” he told this newspaper yesterday.

“What are we putting in these persons’ heads? We (are) training everybody for success, but I believe that the time has come when we got to prepare people for failure. Because success is something that you might experience, but failure is something that you will experience.”

According to Pastor Reid, 46 of the 128 murder victims last year were people who were either electrically monitored or on bail for murder.

This, he said, reflects that retaliation is one of the biggest contributing factors to crime in the country, noting that crime prevention and intervention are important, however the country also needs to find ways to solve murder cases faster.

While acknowledging the flaws in the judicial system, Pastor Reid also noted that rehabilitative structures must be implemented to break the cycle of crime.

He said the focus on incarceration comes at a more expensive cost to the government when compared with ensuring preventative measures are taken.

“It costs us $20,000 a year, almost $20,000 to house every inmate that’s incarcerated,” he said yesterday.

“So when we look at putting a person that is convicted, now, we have basically I think about 1400 persons that are incarcerated right now, when you do the maths, right that’s a whole heap of money that we spent.

“We need to see how we make an investment like the Prime Minister said, at the beginning of the year, in preventative intervention programmes that seek to prevent persons from going there (Bahamas Department of Correctional Services).”

Meanwhile, National Security Minister Wayne Munroe said his ministry had relaunched a series of crime preventive measures last year to help deter youth from turning to a life of crime.

He said the intervention programmes launched are youth-centred as many of the people being charged in the courts for murder offences are young people.

“So, the government’s policy is to intervene in the lives of young people at risk and stop them being people who are willing to shoot people four or five times in their head,” he told The Tribune yesterday.

“We’ve reintroduced programmes that the previous administration stopped, intervening in the lives of junior high and senior high students.

“We’ve introduced programmes intervening in the lives of primary school students because we found that there were murderers who were 15 years old. So it’s a bit too late when you’re a junior high and senior high student, so we’ve determined to intervene when you’re a primary school student,” he continued.

He said the government cannot “tolerate” the crime situation in the country, hence the decision to return to the previous crime plan that was on the table during the last Christie administration.