Every inch a clear thinker who prefers scholarly articulation, Professor Andy Knight opted for well-reasoned arguments to make an urgent appeal to the Caribbean.
The former chairman of the University of Alberta’s Department of Political Science, who until recently was the director of the University of the West Indies’ Institute of International Relations in Trinidad and Tobago, did that in a conversation with BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY.
“It’s something that should be dealt with as a matter of urgency because it can adversely affect the economic and social well-being and way of life of the people across the Caribbean,” asserted Knight, a Barbadian by birth with a distinguished academic career that has attracted global attention at the United Nations, the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council and the International Development Research Center.
Homicide rates
“Jamaica stands out with extraordinarily high rates of homicides since about 2000 while Trinidad and Tobago saw the rise in the rates of homicides over the past decade or so and The Bahamas may have surpassed the rates of Trinidad (per capita),” said Knight, the author of several books and scholarly papers on a range of political science matters.
“Here you have three of the bigger countries with these high rates of homicides.
“Barbados’ homicide rate has remained fairly constant and it hasn’t reached the rates of Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and The Bahamas. But there are still many concerns.”
What worries him is the link between poor economic performance of these countries and mushrooming crime. With unemployment, especially among the youth at troublesome levels across the region, what catches his eye is the lack of jobs for school leavers and young adults and how joblessness and crime can combine to undermine the lucrative tourism industry, a mainstay of Caribbean economies, if left unattended.
Economic picture
Double-digit unemployment rates, widening deficits, a mountain of debt, shortages of foreign exchange, anemic economic growth and falling Wall Street credit ratings already characterise the economic pictures of individual islands – Barbados included – and although the United States economy, to which the region is inextricably linked, has recorded a consistent pattern of economic expansion, albeit comparatively low, the English-speaking Caribbean states seemed locked in a vice grip of relatively low productivity and underperformance.
According to reports, Jamaica, with a population of 2.7 million, recorded more than 1 300 homicides last year, an 11 per cent jump over 2015.
Trinidad and Tobago, whose population was estimated at 1.2 million, had more than 450. In The Bahamas, where the population stands at 300 000 plus, the police had to investigate more than 100 killings in 2016. Barbados, with a population of less than 290 000, recorded 21 homicides in 2016, compared with 31 the year before.
Crime summit
St Lucia’s Prime Minister Allen Chastanet was recently quoted as saying that he was brought to tears over the number of murders there during the first weekend of 2017. Six St Lucians were murdered over that bloody weekend.
Little wonder, then, that Knight thinks Caribbean leaders should meet at a summit to consider the issue of crime and come up with some solutions.
“When you have a situation in which homicide rates in some of the major economies in the Caribbean are much higher than those of New York and Chicago, the leaders of the region must sit down and decide how to tackle the problem,” said Knight.
“We can’t afford to rely simply on national measures to deal with the problem.
“There must be a regional strategy. Individual countries can’t solve it alone.”
In a region of about five million, CARICOM states collectively recorded more than 1 800 homicides in 2016. In New York City, where eight million people live (more than 500 000 are Caribbean immigrants), murders tumbled to 334 last year, the lowest level on record.
But in Chicago, America’s third largest city with 2.8 million people, the homicide total skyrocketed to 763 in 2016, up from 465 the year before. In Los Angeles, with its four million-plus population, the police had to investigate 294 killings.
So, in three cities with combined populations of more than 14 million, the death toll of about 1 600 homicides was lower than the combined total recorded in Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, The Bahamas, Barbados and their neighbours.
Governments’ responsibility
“The governments of the region have a responsibility to their citizens to deal with this, not just as individual countries addressing crime but as a region,” said Knight. “Criminal elements are penetrating these countries. They are not only indigenous and domestic criminal activities, but they are what I call ‘intermestic’ criminal activities in which lines are blurred between international and domestic now.
“A lot of the controls that we may have had domestically are unable to deal with the criminal element that’s coming from outside.”
And that situation can hurt the economy.
“Individual countries can tackle it if they want, but they are not going to be as successful as if they put together a collective effort,” Knight advised.
But the potential nightmare doesn’t end there. Terrorism can infiltrate the Caribbean, a region that so far has been free of it. The presence of Trinidadian Islamic fighters in the Middle East alongside ISIS Jihadists raise troubling issues if or when they return home.
“I have considerable concern about Trinidad and Tobago having about 120 or so foreign fighters battling for ISIS,” Knight said.
“It’s extraordinary for a small country like Trinidad and Tobago to have so many fighters per capita joining the fight alongside ISIS terrorists.”
Beyond the summit
Professor Cecil Foster, a Barbadian who is chairman of the Department of Transnational Studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo, felt a summit of Caribbean leaders alone wouldn’t be the answer.
“Even if we do convene a summit of the region’s leaders, there must be a mechanism to allow new thought, new ideas to infiltrate the process,” said Foster, a leading novelist and political commentator in Canada.
“I am sure that there are all sorts of consultations that are going which we don’t see, but to me, apart from the aspect of people meeting and discussing the issue and throwing a spotlight on the issue, what happens when they go back home?
“What kinds of policies they are likely to come up with? To me, we need some new thinking on the issue of crime.”