What to do About Crime in the Bahamas

by Larry Smith

With all the shock-horror at our skyrocketing crime rate, you would never believe that the causes and progress of the country's social breakdown have been fully documented over the past 20-odd years by a series of special reports.

They were produced by the 1984 commission of inquiry into drug smuggling and the task force on drug abuse, the 1994 task force on education and the consultative committee on youth development, and the 1998 national crime commission.

What did that last report conclude? Well, the commissioners (a judge, a psychiatrist, a criminologist, social workers and clergymen) warned that Bahamian society was threatened by "a pervasive culture of dishonesty, greed and a casual disregard for social norms and regulation."

Four years earlier, the education task force had pointed to a "deterioration of traditional values and accepted standards of behaviour", which had produced "the scourge of teenage pregnancy and substance abuse." And previous reports had detailed the rise of lawlessness caused by narcotics trafficking.

The 1994 national youth report - chaired by Anglican prelate Drexel Gomez along with other clergymen, police officers and youth leaders (including a much younger Zhivago Laing) - said indiscipline, materialism and low self-esteem among young Bahamians had the potential to cause a social "catastrophe".

The Gomez report listed high population densities in Nassau, too many bars and liquor stores, squalid neighbourhoods, limited recreational opportunities, education failures and the fact that single girls were having too many babies as among the chief factors shaping the behaviour of our young people.

According to the experts, these factors had contributed to a rise in domestic violence, a decline in social responsibility and work ethic, a lack of national pride, more lifestyle diseases like alcoholism, AIDS and obesity, and rising levels of criminality. In other words, a culture of raging self-indulgence.

"Roaming youth, especially on New Providence, went on rampages, damaging property and inflicting harm. There was a growing tendency to use guns or knives to settle scores and access to guns was increasingly easy," the report said.

"Failure to educate students about life issues including the natural environment, social responsibility, moral duty and cultural heritage was seen as contributing to the aimlessness of youth and their uncertainty about identity...An entrenched class of underachievers existed...A government job was preferred."

The 1994 report concluded that fundamental social reforms were needed, as well as more public education, youth training and job programmes.

Stamping out gang warfare in the schools and providing more extra-curricular activities for bored students were considered vital. Alcohol and drug abuse were acknowledged as major contributors to school underachievement, and the Broadcasting Corporation was urged to focus on more appropriate youth programming.

The report added that young people were also products of their physical environment, and called for proper zoning and urban planning to avoid the decay of neighbourhoods throughout the Bahamas by creeping commercialisation. And politicians were urged to provide "visionary leadership" based on personal integrity and public accountability.

That was 14 years ago. Four years after that, the national crime commission was appointed amid growing fears that New Providence was on the verge of "social collapse". Led by Chief Justice Sir Burton Hall, this panel found that the Bahamian family was fast disintegrating into a pit of domestic violence and sexual abuse.

"We are reaping the rewards of our own inabilities, inattentiveness, incompetence and indiscipline," the report said, "the seeds of which were sown many years ago...Commissioners are left with the impression that most crimes, of all types, are the product of greed, not need."

Again there were strident calls for the media to re-examine their perceived role as purveyors of gratuitous violence, promiscuous sex and double standards. Commissioners strongly supported the transformation of ZNS into a socially responsible public broadcaster along the lines of the CBC or BBC.

Gang activities had become more of a problem in the four years that had elapsed since the youth report was published. In 1998 the commissioners referred to the deployment of gang members by political parties to disrupt the activities of opponents. And there were fresh allegations of this sort of dark alliance during last year's hotly contested poll.

The commissioners agreed that there was a direct link between the physical squalour of our communities and other forms of anti-social behaviour. They called for an environmental court to deal with illegal dumping and littering, as well as the regulation of roadside garages and street vendors - considered destinations for stolen vehicles and produce.

The report also urged a larger role for the churches and a "back to the sabbath" drive as a means of restoring traditional values. But recent research has suggested that the more religious a society is, the more violent and dysfunctional it is. These unexpected correlations are discussed in the Journal of Religion and Society (http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html) where they are summarised like this:

"No democracy is known to have combined strong religiosity and popular denial of evolution with high rates of societal health. Higher rates of non-theism and acceptance of human evolution usually correlate with lower rates of dysfunction, and the least theistic nations are usually the least dysfunctional."

Well, that is really a subject for another time, but so much for candlelight prayer vigils to stop crime. However, the 1998 report did expose some of the other blatant hypocrisies of Bahamian life, pointing out a few "striking examples of how the public gets agitated about certain types of crime while many of that same public are complicit in other crimes."

Those examples included the high level of theft among hotel employees; the money lost by businesses at the hands of customers, employees and suppliers - much higher than the losses due to armed robbery; the theft of funds by charity and church workers; and the damage done to our primary producers by the widespread stealing of produce and livestock as well as fishing boats and gear.

There were also the now familiar calls to fix our judicial system - by providing new court facilities and administrative improvements - and for even and consistent law enforcement, with more police presence in critical areas like Bay Street. Bahamians tolerated a culture of lawlessness, the report said, as demonstrated by the popular numbers racket and the wholesale flouting of traffic, environmental and street vending regulations.

One key recommendation was the formation of a permanent non-political advisory body to act as the ultimate oversight authority on critical social issues. This citizens' council was finally appointed last year to offer practical proposals for crime control. Members include clergymen, social workers, policemen, and business representatives.

State Finance Minister Zhivago Laing told Tough Call recently that the government had responded to all this advice in an ad hoc way over the years, setting up projects like Operation Redemption, providing better funding for youth groups, and making a few attempts at community centres.

"The leadership in government to effect change is clear, but among parents, churches, civic groups, businesses and others it is not so clear. We need a strategically organized response to pursue the advice contained in these reports," he said.

So what should that strategic response be? Well, the conventional wisdom is that in the late 1970s the corrupt Pindling regime colluded with the Colombian cartel to set the country on a downward spiral of easy money, drug abuse and political gangsterism. This contributed to the destruction of our traditional values and produced generations of amoral space cadets.

But Pindling was a product of his society, and that society was hardly a model of rectitude pre-majority rule. While it is true that there was very little violence, despite the social exclusion and economic deprivation faced by most of the population at the time, our history books are full of references to the Bahamian penchant for ignoring the law - from piracy to wrecking to blockade running to bootlegging to tax evasion and so on.

So perhaps we should go back to our roots to learn how to deal with the present crime problem. As early as the 1700s "the Bahamian tradition of sailing close to the wind was well-established," historians Gail Saunders and Michael Craton wrote in their book, Islanders in the Stream. "Behind a comparatively respectable facade, shore-based individuals were able to profit from piracy without direct involvement in its brutality and bloodshed."

But in 1718 the British sent Governor Woodes Rogers with ships and troops to establish the first effective Bahamian government. Rogers declared martial law, reorganised the militia and launched a programme of public works so that "Nassau began to have the appearance of a civilised place".

He also cracked down on piracy. And perhaps that's what we need to do today. But, you say, to do that we need a new prison, as well as more courts, judges and prosecutors. Well, those are finite requirements and if we don't get them we may as well give up now and welcome Blackbeard back.

It could be that the only way to achieve social reform and a civil society is by enforcing the law.

Comments

[Joe Gibson]

This should be required reading for all religious ministers and other publicity hunters. The media continues to give these people unqualified and unlimited space and airtime to promote nonsense.