The National Newspaper of St. Vincent and the Grenadines
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FRIDAY,
APRIL 20, 2018
VOLUME 112, No.16
www.thevincentian.com
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CRIME IN SVG: MOVING TO CHRONIC STAGE Professor Anthony Harriott, delivering the Keynote Address as this week’s ‘Conversation on Crime and Violence’, in which he had words of warning for SVG.
Professor Harriott, one of the region’s renowned DATA INDICATES that St Vincent criminologists and author of and the Grenadines is inching in extensive papers and books on the direction of a sub-culture of the issue of crime in his native violence. Jamaica and the region, was And according to Professor the Keynote Speaker at a twoAnthony Harriott, Director of day (April 18 & 19) National the Institute of Criminal Conversation on Crime and Justice at the University of Violence, coordinated by the St the West Indies, Mona Vincent and the Grenadines Campus, Jamaica, skillful Christian Council. intervention is needed now in He explained that, based on order to avoid this eventuality. the data, there was a period by DAYLE DASILVA
when there was some stability, then a period of oscillation (downward movement). SVG seems to have entered the upward movement phase. Countries such as Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, where the crime situation was considered ‘chronic’, went through similar patterns, Professor Harriott cited, and he cautioned that it was quite a different thing when a country moved from that
Participation at the two-day ‘Conversation’ was wide and varied.
second stage and into a third, or chronic stage. “In that third stage, your culture of peace begins to lose ground to a sub-culture of violence, and it becomes very difficult to manage the problem,” the Professor said. A country with a subculture of violence takes on a different dynamic, so, for example, when a murder is committed, rather than the situation being one where the individual is apprehended, taken through the judicial system and eventually convicted and sentenced, it instead becomes one where reprisals occur and gangs are formed, Prof. Harriot explained.
Categorising regional countries Professor Harriott placed the countries in the region into three categories: those where the crime and violence situation was emerging; others where it was mature; and the few where the problem was chronic. In each case, the response to the problem has to be different. “My assessment is that you (SVG) are hopefully still emerging, but you may be emergent and trending into a direction of maturity, and this calls for some urgency,” Prof Harriott said. Continued on Page 3.