The Tribune

By Timothy Roberts

“Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today, as a nation, we are looking at 25 murders in this young year.

Many may be wondering how we have arrived at this place and more importantly, how can we stop this epidemic of violence affecting primarily our inner-city youth - if indeed there is a way to halt it?

Our first order of business is to get a right understanding of the reasons why we are where we are, then develop a competent plan of action based on empirically sound evidence-based solutions.

These solutions then need to be carried out by competent people who are invested not solely in the solution, but on the subjects we are hoping to positively impact – our youth and young men, especially.

Fortunately, this already exists.

In 2004, a Citizen Safety Diagnostic study (funded by the IDB) was presented focused on the scope of crime statistics over the period of 1982 to 2002.

This study, produced by Marlon Johnson, looked at root causes of crimes, and provided evidence-based solutions, both long-term and short-term.

Twenty years later, he feels there has been basically no change to the causes of crime nor the solutions, we are merely further down the same road.

Mr Johnson says that his report was focused on the drivers of crime and recommendations on how to deal with it.

“So, as far as the root causes then, I think one of the things I consistently tell people is that we’ve had a crime problem, a homicide problem, a violent crime problem, for many decades,” he said.

“We like to think about it accelerating in the 80s and 90s, and in a lot of instances, it has gotten worse; but in the late 60s, and early 70s, our homicide rate then was higher than it is in the United States today.

“So you think about it - over 50 years ago, the homicide rate in The Bahamas was higher then than it is in the United States, and now, and that’s just a fact.” he said.

So, according to Mr Johnson, we’re dealing with a 50-year-old problem, and certainly, it has got progressively worse.

Mr Johnson said that the year he did the report, around 2002, the murder count was around 76 which we have since doubled on occasion.

Mr Johnson said: “The homicide situation got worse, but the key drivers were the same, at least from what I can tell.”

In his report, Mr Johnson outlines some of the key elements that are prevalent in violent crimes, which included domestic disputes, offenders were from urban areas, typically young men 18-35 (though now more likely 16-35), challenging academic environments and poor financial status.

In 2002, when Johnson was putting the report together, the most prevalent element was domestic disputes. “At the time then, close to half of the homicides were related to domestic issues. That proportion has probably changed, but we cannot forget that a significant amount of violence, whether it’s sexual assaults, interpersonal sort of physical assaults, happen at the domestic level,” he said.

“So, these are relationship issues, and we can lose sight of that because of the increase in the number of what is commonly referred to as gang-related violence,” he said.

Mr Johnson said that the domestic component is still substantial, the other phenomenon that was true and is still largely true as it relates to, at least violent crime, is still an urban problem in The Bahamas.

In his report, the statistics, as would be expected, were higher in New Providence and Grand Bahama, but on a per capita basis, Nassau was significantly higher than other islands rates, particularly due to larger urban population compared to other islands.

He said: “If you were to do a chart, probably 90 percent of the homicide perpetrators and victims are young men from an urban area within this age demographic, and who come from, more often than not, challenging home environments and challenging academic environments.

“Why that’s important is because our crime strategies must start with that premise of being focused on who are the primary perpetrators, and victims of violent incidents,” he said.

Mr Johnson said his report outlined short, medium and long-term solutions to reduce instances of crime/violent crime, he added that each phase should tie into the next.

“Because as we have now, when you have a spike in homicides, or you have a spike in any violent crime statistics, telling us what could happen three and five years or ten years down the road doesn’t address the issue today,” Mr Johnson said.

“Whatever we do, and I think this is part of the ongoing challenge we have, it must be an integrated crime strategy; and that means that it’s multi-sectoral, it’s multi-institutional, and that it’s documented and sustained.

“It cannot be that the police are doing a set of things, and urban renewal is doing a set of things, social services, ministry of education all doing their own thing. And they could all be actually good programmes, but they have to be integrated. There has to be a common database.” he said.

He said that we need “a programme or project-based approach to the murder issue, where there are agreed markers, agreed key performance indicators (KPIs), agreed interventions, and so we’re not duplicating resources, and so we all have a clear-cut sense of what it is we’re trying to get at, and so that the short-term can dovetail into the medium-term, which can then dovetail into the long-term.”

On the short-term side, as the report pointed out, hotspot patrolling is critical, he said and you have to saturate the areas where you suspect crime is prevalent.

He said that even though resources are an issue here, “the good news now, as compared to [twenty years ago], is technology is so much more advanced.”

“We have invested a lot in CCTV, but I do believe that we need to have more of that, because now you can do facial recognition and licence plate recognition,” he said.

“But more than that, you must have people who can do the data mining and the intelligence analysis so that you can interpret these vast swaths of information you get. If we deploy licence plate tracking and we start to use it properly, what trends are you picking up?

“And I think that remains an area of challenge for us. We may in the near term need to bring in some talent just to help train and bring our people up on that intelligence side because that’s important in developing trends,” he said.

But it’s also important in disrupting gun imports.

Mr Johnson said: “We will never be able to police the 700 islands and keys of the Bahamas because there are just too many ways for guns to get in. But what we must do is you have to make it more costly and more dangerous to be involved in the transfer.”

He said that by disrupting the actual established networks, including importers and traders of guns cannot, making it more difficult and making the cost of a gun more expensive, can reduce the prevalence of guns on the streets.

“Because the risk profile goes up, and so a gun that you get for $300 now becomes $1,000, and now that by itself limits who can afford it,” he said.

He added that whether it is hotspot patrolling or making use of drone technology, that “it’s not just a matter of getting the technology, but making sure we have the wherewithal to utilise it effectively.”

He said: “The other good news, bad news story for us, is that we literally have hundreds of very well-meaning civic and sporting organisations, but the question is, are they all going in the same direction? Have they sat down and figured out how they can marshall their resources, limited as they are, for common programmes that they all can work together as opposed to everybody trying to discreetly run their own programme?”

Mr Johnson added: “We have to then, both as a government and civil society, say, listen, we have to now decide we’re going to put aside our egos and our silos and say, if we are trying to get to the young men and young boys who are at risk, then we need some common things that we can work together, because there’s only a limited number of hands.

“We need to understand our long-term goal is to impact lives, not build empires - I think this is the way we optimise our success.”

• PART TWO of this interview will appear in next Monday’s Tribune.