The Roots of Crime in the Bahamas

by Larry Smith

Conversations with taxi drivers these days are no longer about the weather or business - they're all about the latest killings.

Another young man stabbed or shot to death for who knows what. Another young woman dispatched in a domestic quarrel. Another gunfight at the fish fry. Experts say homicide is a reliable barometer of all violent crime, and we have had 46 murders so far this year - one of the highest per capita rates in the world.

Death by violence is commonplace on New Providence, along with armed robbery and rape, and our youth seem to be armed to the teeth. When 18-year-old Mardio Hall was killed at the QE sports centre days ago, newspaper reports said other young people in the crowd were moved to fire their weapons in the air.

Police say 70 per cent of local murders are committed by young men between the ages of 18 and 35 - and their victims are usually other young men. The causes range from gang warfare to lovers' quarrels to drug disputes to plain old arguments.

And public response to this unprecedented tide of killings has been predictable. The Christian Council demands "immediate hangings." Others call for prayer meetings. And some have suggested an amnesty for thugs to turn in their weapons to local pastors.

As for the causes, some argue that our young men are bored, uneducated and unable to make a living. Others say they want the power that comes with guns. Still others say it's a question of anger management, because even trivial disputes lead to violence. And since weapons abound, the violence is often deadly.

In fact, one of society's greatest fears today is the swaggering youth with a gun or knife in his hand and ruthlessness in his heart. And the big question is: are we are producing a generation of killers that will send the country spiraling into anarchy?

This breakdown is often attributed to our dysfunctional court system, which cannot properly process or hold criminals. As former policeman Paul Thompson says, "our courts are in shambles and the backlog of cases continues to escalate resulting in persons accused of very serious crimes being given bail after years in prison without trial."

And here's what one political leader had to say about the problem: "We know we've got about six years to turn this juvenile crime thing around or our country is going to be living with chaos."

That was Bill Clinton - president of the United States from 1992 to 2000. He was reacting to the dramatic crime wave of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when increases in drug dealing and related handgun violence in the US pushed up the murder rate for teenagers by 22 per cent. And all the experts said it would only get worse.

Criminologist James Allen Fox predicted "a bloodbath of teen violence in the years ahead...Too many children are coming out undersocialized and undersupervised. They have too much free time on their hands. Literally time to kill."

Experts have long assumed that crime rates are directly related to demographics. For example, conservative theorist James Q. Wilson said in 1975 that "a critical mass of younger persons... creates an explosive increase in the amount of crime."

But it is not just the number of young people that is important to the crime rate. It is also the kind of families they come from. Social scientists say the rise in violent crime has paralleled the rise in families that have been abandoned by fathers, and a 10 per cent increase in the percentage of children living in single-parent homes leads typically to a 17 per cent increase in juvenile crime.

According to Dr Patrick Fagan of the Heritage Foundation (writing in 1995), "The evidence suggests that at the heart of the explosion of crime in America is the loss of the capacity of fathers and mothers to be responsible in caring for the children they bring into the world. This loss of love and guidance at the intimate levels of marriage and family has broad social consequences for children and for the wider community."

In this view, the root cause of crime is not poverty, but moral failure. It is the refusal to exercise personal responsibility and the inability to enter into relationships based on a common code of conduct. For example, one major US study of 11,000 individuals found that "the percentage of single-parent households with children between the ages of 12 and 20 is significantly associated with rates of violent crime and burglary."

And Kevin Wright, professor of criminal justice at the State University of New York, says "Research confirms that children raised in supportive, affectionate, and accepting homes are less likely to become deviant. Children rejected by parents are among the most likely to become delinquent."

In fact, this theory was confirmed by the last taxi driver I spoke to - one Livingstone Miller of Everglades Road: "People blame the PLP government and they blame the FNM government, but it is really the family and the way they bring these kids up."

Miller, a devout Roman Catholic, agrees with all the researchers who find that a neighborhood composed mainly of single-parent families is invariably a chaotic, crime-ridden community in which assaults are high and the gang - the delinquent subcommunity - assumes control.

Prayer services won't cut it. And there are no statistics anywhere to prove that the death penalty reduces crime. But, as Dr Fagan says, "it is no coincidence that one of the central rules in the traditional moral codes of all communities at all times, in all places, and in all cultures is the prohibition against giving birth to children outside of marriage. Societies all over the world have recognized that this prohibition is essential to social stability and to raising members of each new generation with the proper respect for their community and their peers."

In their book, Freakonomics, economists Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner examined factors that played a critical role in reducing crime in the US during the 1990s. These factors included extra police, jailing more criminals, the decline of the crack epidemic and legalization of abortion in the 1970s.

"The magnitude of this reversal was astounding," Levitt and Dubner say. "The murder rate, instead of rising 100 per cent, or even 15 per cent as James Allen Fox had warned, fell more than 50 per cent within five years. By 2000 the overall murder rate in the United States had dropped to its lowest level in 35 years. So had the rate of just about every other sort of crime."

They attribute this largely to a young woman in Dallas named Norma McCorvey - a poor, uneducated, unskilled, alcoholic, drug-using 21-year-old who had already given up two children for adoption and found herself pregnant again. She became the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit to legalise abortion, which made its way to the Supreme Court in 1973 under the name of Roe versus Wade.

So how did abortion help trigger the greatest crime drop in recorded history?

Well, as Levitt and Dubner point out, "as far as crime is concerned, not all children are born equal. Decades of studies have shown that a child born into an adverse family environment is far more likely than other children to become a criminal. And the millions of women mostly likely to have an abortion in the wake of Roe vs Wade - poor, unmarried, teenage mothers - were often models of adversity. They were the very women whose children, if born, would have been much more likely than average to become criminals.

"It wasn't gun control or a strong economy or new police strategies that finally blunted the American crime wave. It was, among other factors, the reality that a pool of potential criminals had dramatically shrunk."

So should we Bahamians be concerned about the careless reproduction of unwanted and uncared for children? Well, about 70 per cent of all births in the Bahamas are now illegitimate and almost half of very poor households are headed by single women, supporting five or more dependents. We also have the top recorded rape rate in the world and one of the highest murder rates.

National Security Minister Tommy Turnquest says the government is working on a multisectoral crime control master plan to be unveiled in the fall. This has been a recommendation of the CARICOM Task Force on Crime and Security since 2002.

But to address the real roots of crime, it seems that our political and religious leaders should be inspiring Bahamians to rebuild their families and communities. And it also means that the people at the top must set the supreme example by following the rules and codes of conduct themselves.

Comments

[no name]

Mr. Smith,

I read your column in The Tribune this morning and must say you were point on with most of your statements. Do you think the Urban Renewal Program as it was under the PLP one way to fill the void left by children with parentless homes? Our current Prime Minister comes from such a home and may be one of the reasons for his mean spirited and megalomaniac traits.

[larry smith]

Frankly, I have yet to see an objective assessment of that programme. But the recent controversy over it is nothing but political hoo ha - on both sides.

[millicent]

hanging people already on death row will accomplish nothing.
The public and press have long forgetten who those people are, who they killed, why... They won't care.

BUT if the police and courts could capture the persons responsible for these recent murders give them their fair trail, sentence them appropriately, and if that setence be death, execute them in a timely fashion while their story is still worthy of the front pages and fresh in people's minds then it will actually have an effect.

Prayer meetings where dozens of old people leave their children unattended and go to pray for the youth is just silly.
Maybe, if more of those parents were capable of getting their youth to come with them it would mean something.

Thugs are not going to hand over their guns. The only thing worth doing is to offer much higher rewards for information leading to arrests. For example, there is an overgrown piece of property through a dead end corner in a relatively nice neighbourhood that I pass every morning on my way to work. The FIRST time I passed this corner I knew IMMEDIATELY that I could probably get drugs from that spot. Other than the sale of drugs, no crimes have happened in that spot but over the last 3 years a number of non-fatal stabbings occurred as a result of arguements that started there and ended elsewhere. The neighbours surrounding this property should be the ones to ask the police to clear out the criminals but I guess they never asked. It's a frightening thing to do. What if the dealers somehow figure out who called it in and want to take revenge? So nobody ever calls. Why? Because there is no 'support' among the neighbours. Unlike the out islands where everyone knows the the name of at least 1 person in every house in the entire settlement, people in some parts of nassau don't even know the names of people across the street from them. They aren't really a community. They can't get together and say "everbody through this corner is going to call the police on these dealers and if they wanna retaliate they will have to deal with all of us as a group because we will support each other"

[larry smith]

Hangings have been suspended because the Privy Council (our highest court of appeal) upholds the view that keeping convicts on death row for longer than five years is cruel and unusual punishment.

The Privy Council is also based in London, and the entire European Union has banned capital punishment.

Also, as I said in the article, there is absolutely no evidence that the death penalty deters serious crimes.

I agree with you that prayer meetings are silly and of course thugs are not going to hand over their guns. I mentioned those suggestions to show the disconnect with reality that many Bahamians share.

It is also true, as you say, that there are very few real communities in Nassau these days, especially in lower income neighbourhoods.

But, other than the sociological factors discussed in my article, one big reason for our problems is the lack of consequences for anyone who does anything 'wrong'.

From politicians to lawyers to doctors to street vendors to thugs - no-one ever has to pay for their transgressions. And that is the definition of lawlessness.

[bahabernie]

Can anyone say what number of murders have taken place in Nassau thus far for the year?
I am wondering if "life is cheap in Nassau" and not necessarily in the Bahamas? We would do well to remember that New Providence is only the capital not the entire Bahamas.

[no name]

Hey Larry,

We talk about crime being out of control, which by the way it is and how to fight it. How can we put an end or even a dent in crime when a person in a top position in the police force, with allegations of using his police connections to cover his children’s and brothers child’s crimes is promoted and not fired????

[larry smith]

you obviously know more than I do.

[dadon589]

All

We still haven't discussed any substantive solutions. We all know it is bad and spiralling out of control. It's not the PLP or FNM fault/problem. It's all our fault, because we've become too concerned with personal wealth and money as opposed to building a nation and a sense of community. We drive into downtown in the AM and drive pass all the Grants, Bain Town, etc. with our blinders on all the way to Sea Breeze, Yamacraw, Cable Beach, etc.. So here's my attempt at some solutions...

1. More funding needs to be allocated to increase the effectiveness of the Police Force. The leadership and culture is antiquated and belongs to a time when our country was more peaceful and less violent. It is a totally new era in which we have not updated our approach to fighting crime. Yes the Bahamas civil service has a lot of "Pork Barrel" Ministires that are ineffective and need to be let go as well as privatize and outsource work that ministries are inadequate at doing. Police need to be patrolling the streets 24/7 not sitting on their ...es at the station eating chicken sous and pig feet. Our policing approach is lazy and ineffective. Law enforcement needs to be seen not just when there's a parade or event at the fish fry or screaming sirens when the GG is going to/from Government House. That $7 million should be reinvested in a fleet of police cruisers and other equipment, but it won't.

2. Urban Renewal/Community policing is an imporatnt ingredient in the solution. The more we invest in our communities the more we will see positive results. We have forgotten that many of us came from those very same communities that are now in shambles partly because we don't do what works. I've seen Jewish communities become oasises (sp?) in inner city communities in the US. Why? They invest in themselves.

3. Bahamians have a poor attitude about volunteerism. Now, they'll donate some money here and there, support a steak-out (especially when food and alcohol is involved) but they rarely give of their time to mentor youth, support communtiy based programs that would deter a lot of kids from crime. Especially the professional elite Bahamians with their multitude of law, masters and PhD degrees solely concerned about the almighty dollar and could care less about showing a kid the path they took to success.If we don't give of our time to rebuilding communities they will fail period.

4. The Ministry of Youth and Culture needs to be educated that there's more to youth experiences than junkanoo, musical instruments, and traditonal sports like baseball and basketball. We have a whole archipelago that can be explored through youth programs. We ahve the BNT, Nature Conservancy, the BERC, etc. that could use a youth labor force in the Summer months. We have Agriculture and Fisheries that could use a youth program to educate about the science of fishing and farming. Not just how to be a farm laborer. We have a gazillion bankers and accountants that can support workshiops in various communities on entrepreneurship. Whew! I could go on and on about this one.

5. Our immigrant communities need to be fully integrated into Bahamian society to offset the frustration they endure from being so disenfranchised by our society. We have and are creating an entire sub-culture mainly of immigrants that have been turned into second-class citizens who are disallowed from the full Bahamian experience. I could care less what candidates' parents are of Haitian decent. This is childish stuff we deal with.

Bottom line is it won't get better until we all start caring and doing something to solve it. We already know how the economies of some Caribbean states have been devastated by the growth in violent crime. Let's learn from their mistakes.

[glen more]

As always, I enjoy reading TOUGH CALL.

I remember Larry Roberts giving a talk about twelve years or so ago at the annual Business Outlook conference. I don’t think anyone really listened to Larry’s jeremiad on the alarming incidence of crime against the person, but he was spot on way back then. If you check with him, he might still have a copy of his speech.

What has happened in our beautiful country, especially in populous Lil Nassau, is that freedom has turned into licentiousness, and laws are not enforced; so what Paul prophesied about in his second letter to Timothy has come true. Please read 2 Timothy 3: 1-5.

Fallen human nature has not changed one bit; so, just as the enforcement of the law was necessary thousands of years ago, so it is necessary today. The Congregator had something to say about this in Ecclesiastes 8:11: “Because sentence against a bad work has not been executed speedily, that is why the heart of the sons of men has become fully set in them to do bad.”

[thinsoldier]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/crime/homicidemap/?source=local_news

I really wish one of our newspapers or somebody would get their hands on the reports and put something like this together.

Age, Race, Gender, Cause of Death, Day of the Week, Name, Place, Date, and a MAP of where the murder took place. Also they have informative articles about every murder and update some of them with info about the court cases of the murderers.

The Bahamian public needs it's own community run Homicide Report.

[Remelda Been]

I realize that our country is in serious turmoil. The only way we can turn things around is by allowing Almighty God to lead us. Our children need good old fashion home training. Proverbs 22:6 says "Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it." Too many of our children are bringing up themselves. As an educator I realize that our children do not want mentors or friends they want their parents. They want a parent's love and attention. Parents need to spend quality time with their children. While doing this they should be teaching them how to behave in a civilized society. This means that their children can and should not have their own way and all that they want. Children must learn to do without and learn that they can not have everything that they want. The only way we can combat this problem is go back to the traditional form of education and character training. It did not hurt my generation.

God Bless
Remelda Been