WITH BARBADOS GRAPPLING with a prolonged stagnating economy, high joblessness, and declining foreign exchange reserves, its private sector has had little to celebrate in recent times.
And when the recent debacle at the Central Bank over the firing of Governor Dr DeLisle Worrell was added to the equation, it became clear that businesses had more than their fair share of woes.
That was why it was something of a consolation when a recent report on the “costs of crime and violence” in the Caribbean and Latin America indicated that although firms in Barbados were paying a high price for crime, Bajan companies weren’t the region’s prime victims.
Yes, like companies in The Bahamas, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Guyana, Bajan firms suffer from theft, robbery, vandalism and even arson. But what’s also true, the island’s private sector was among the least victimised in the Caribbean.
Victimisation was measured by the amount of money firms spend to guard against crimes and in Barbados’ case, the businesses were second only to their counterparts in Belize with eight per cent losses traceable to crime. Barbados’ was between of 11 to 12 per cent while Jamaica’s was close to 20 per cent. Antigua and Barbuda and St Lucia were in 20-22 per cent range; St Vincent and Trinidad and Tobago were a little under 25 per cent.
The worst hit firms were in Guyana with 33 per cent and St Kitts-Nevis slightly less, according to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).
When the experts examined crime data, they found that crooks and vandals were costing Bajan businesses an estimated 1.3 per cent of sales when compared with Suriname’s six per cent. As a matter of fact, Barbados’ company losses were much lower than the international average of 4.8 per cent.
Here is what the regional picture as painted by the IDB looked like:
The Caribbean’s regional average of business losses due to crime was 3.6 per cent of sales.
Seventy per cent of Caribbean firms reported spending money in 2013-14 on security and the money went for equipment, insurance, and personnel to professional security services.
As many as 85 per cent of the firms in Trinidad and Tobago paid for security while in St Lucia’s was 44 per cent. Sixty-three per cent of firms had installed gates and cameras as crime fighting tools.
Some of the heaviest spenders on security were The Bahamas, Suriname and Guyana.
Jamaica, The Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago recorded the highest levels of violent crime. And that was particularly true of homicides.
Little wonder that the IDB experts concluded “crime in the Caribbean takes a heavy toll on the private sector in terms of the costs it imposes”.
Obviously, the elephant in the room is what governments are doing to curb crime.
“Overwhelmingly, the favoured solution has been expenditure on law enforcement as opposed to other components of a potential solution,” the report noted. “Caribbean countries have responded to the high crime problem with some of the lowest expenditure on administration of justice and some of the highest expenditure on police compared to the average for 17 countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region.”
Interestingly, Barbados is on the list of states that spend the least on justice administration, about 0.06 per cent of its gross domestic product, stated the IDB. That matches what The Bahamas and Jamaica allocate for it.
Although governments are spending more and more on the police, they may not be the results they are hoping for.
Barbados, The Bahamas, and Trinidad and Tobago have some of the Western Hemisphere’s highest police/population ratios in the Western Hemisphere.
With a population of less than 290 000, Barbados has about 504 cops for every 100 000 people. With 2.1 million people Jamaica has a police density of 423; The Bahamas outstrips its neighbours with 846; and Trinidad and Tobago, whose population is 1.2 million 477 police officers per 100 000 souls. The average population/police ratio in Latin America and the Caribbean is 435.6 while the global figure was 365.5.
Undoubtedly, a key concern is value for money. Are Caribbean countries solving more of their crimes than places with smaller cop averages? The answer was no!
“High police density has not necessarily resulted in rapid response or higher police effectiveness in solving and investigating crime,” complained the experts.
In Trinidad and Tobago, the data showed that crime detection rates there were “extremely low”. Only 13 per cent of murders committed in Trinidad and Tobago were resolved by the police, according to the IDB, while Bahamian cops solved 51 per cent and Jamaica 41 per cent.
What are the solutions? Clearly, more money should be allocated for criminal justice research, a faster pace of court trials and on the acquisition of modern equipment. A flood of cases triggered by mushrooming crime was hampering court action and that in turn was clogging the court calendars.
Barbados shouldn’t behave like the Pharisees of biblical times saying the country wasn’t like its neighbours. Instead it must deal with its problems head-on.
That brings us back to the private sector.
“The number of firms in the Caribbean experiencing losses due to crime and the proportion of firms that pay for private security are higher than the international average,” the IDB experts pointed out.
“These costs draw money away from other activities that could potentially enhance productivity such as the amount spent on research and development, which is lower than the amount spent, which is lower than the amount spent on crime overall.”
