Crime -- The Caribbean NO. 1 Problem

Of all the problems facing the Caribbean almost every one would admit that crime is high on the list, almost at the very top if not the top of the pile.
Just 24 days in the year and already several countries have registered countless criminal acts ranging from murder to robbery, from housebreaking to attempted murder, from assault to carnal knowledge to rape and the list goes on.
The situation is troubling to the smallest of populations in the region to the largest, to the poorest of the poor countries to the not so poor and middle income countries. Crime is a Caribbean plague that Caribbean Governments seem not to have the answer or the antidote to.
Effort after effort from past and present administrations seems not to have much of an impact despite some Governments crooning that statistically crime went down for the year in their countries.
These statistics are never of any significance. A case in point St. Lucia where in 1996 the country’s murder rate was in the early forties compared to being in the late twenties in 2007. Is that anything to boast about? For incumbent politicians this is much to talk about ignoring the fact that close to 30 families have had to endure pain and suffering over the murder of one of their own.
There is a history of violent and property crime in several Caribbean destinations that is shocking and can be considered the dark side of the ideal tourist destination, this chain of islands in the Caribbean Sea is made out to be.
At one point an argument ensued in the region about discriminating crime against visitors versus residents. St. Lucia was not spared the argument especially when crime against visitors appeared to galvanize the police much faster than crime against residents.
There was no arguing the fact that on the surface police success rate at capturing persons who commit crimes against visitors was much better than capturing persons who committed crimes against residents.
However, in the Caribbean one can safely say that residents are significantly more likely to be victimized by violent crime while visitors are significantly more likely to experience property crime and robbery.
According to Klaus de Albuquerque and Jerome McElroy from their paper “Tourism and Crime in the Caribbean” despite all the publicity given to crime against tourists, there has been little theoretical attempt to understand the relationship between tourism and crime. The two asked whether crime is simply another negative externality of tourism or are there other explanations for this relationship?
St. Lucia Tourism Minister Allan Chastenet last week weighed in on crime against visitors after six visitors from a cruise ship that stopped for the day in St. Lucia’s harbour was attacked and robbed of their ID’s jewellery, purses and wallets.

Government’s full machinery went into top gear to control whatever damage the incident would have had on the local tourism industry, which is the main importer of foreign dollars into St. Lucia.
With tourism becoming the number one export of several Caribbean countries situations like last week’s robbery in any one island could spell disaster for that country and to some extent the region, hence the reason why crime, particularly against visitors have surpassed all other problems facing the region to acquire the top spot.
Last year the World Bank released a report stating that the murder rate in the Caribbean was hurting regional growth. The report noted that the tourism-dependent Caribbean may now have the world’s highest murder rate as a region, severely affecting potential economic growth. Blaming most of the violent crime in countries like Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago on the trafficking of Colombian cocaine to Europe and the United States, the report said the region’s homicide rate of 30 per 100,000 inhabitants a year was higher even than troubled southern and western Africa.
It acknowledged that murder statistics in small countries were often problematic because a relatively small number of incidents can result in high rates but said it was clear that homicides were a growing problem in the Caribbean.
The authors cited studies that indicated Haiti, the poorest and most unstable country in the Americas, could raise annual economic growth by 5.4 percent if it cuts its murder rate to the same level as Costa Rica in Central America.
Jamaica, the verdant and mountainous home to reggae and a major marijuana producer, could boost gross domestic product growth by the same amount if it did likewise, while the Dominican Republic and Guyana could add 1.8 percent and 1.7 percent respectively to annual GDP expansion.
What about St. Lucia?
To illustrate how severe the problem of crime is in the region and to add weight to the World Bank report for this year alone more than a dozen people have been murdered in Trinidad and Tobago. Jamaica’s murder rate for 2007 surpassed the previous year’s total, police reports reveal.
Official data released over the weekend indicate there were 1,574 murders in 2007, a 17 percent rise from 2006.
As for St. Lucia that number is already at a cool four. Crime by all accounts seems a malady that may sooner than later cripple the region if the Governments of the day do not tackle it brutally, which really is the only way it should be tackled. Make the criminals pay and pay dearly.