SHIVONNE DU BARRY Sunday, December 16 2007

I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad…And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had 15 homicides and 63 violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be! We all know things are bad – worse than bad – they’re crazy.

It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we’re living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, “Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.”



- Network (1976)



Yep, things are bad. The numbers are undeniable. Well, not entirely because if you look up global figures for murder on the internet you are likely to come across information found in the Seventh United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems which covers the period 1998-2000. This report lists the countries with the three highest homicide rates in the world as Columbia (61 per 100,000), South Africa (49 per 100,000) and Jamaica (32 per 100,000). Trinidad and Tobago was not on the list. Hurray right! Well, no, because the survey was based on figures from nations that actually reported their crime figures to the UN, something we neglected to do. Now, in spite of the credo of BC Pires to not attribute to malevolence what can be explained by simple incompetence in this country of ours, I find the omission more than fishy.

Taking into account that we racked up 368 murders last year and had an estimated population of 1,065,042 at that time, the murder rate was approximately 35 per 100,000 in 2006. That’s good enough to put us in the top five at least and possibly in the top three since we did surpass Jamaica at some point last year; although that may have changed now given the latest murder sprees there. Just this month Jamaica had close to 60 murders in a one week period, a number we haven’t topped even when we factor in population. It’s all a very morbid competition.

Earlier this year, the World Bank said that the Caribbean may now have the highest murder rate in the world as a region, a situation that seriously hampers potential economic growth. In a report entitled Crime, Violence and Development: Trends, Costs and Policy Options in the Caribbean, the organisation pointed to narcotics trafficking activity in places like Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica as being largely responsible for a regional murder rate of 30 per 100,000, a figure which exceeds even the unstable regions of southern and western Africa according to Reuters news agency. We are reminded by the news that TT is close to reaching and maybe exceeding last year’s murder figure of 368. We may have actually reached that milestone by the time this is published.

Such an awful picture, such horrible statistics! It’s a wonder we haven’t gone as mad as Howard Beale in the movie Network, whose mad rant is quoted above. Sometimes I think we have. Sometimes I am certain I have. I have to unlock a total of three gates and one door to get into my home and I still panic at little noises in the night. The fear is palpable all around me and is perpetuated by news and figures of the sort I’ve just cruelly inundated you with. Some sociologists do in fact speak of the role that the media plays in shaping our perceptions of crime and deviance.

Elspeth Duncan describes on her blog (nowiswow.blospot.com) how she has made a conscious decision to block out all local news and how this has caused her to look at the world in a more positive way. It makes sense because your reality is shaped by what you allow to permeate your space. A friend pointed out to me how oblivious to crime Chinese labourers seem to be, walking the streets at hours that most of us would never dare. Yet I am one of those schmucks who prefer to be miserable in the name of being informed. And even if I could escape the media, I wouldn’t be able to escape the stories from neighbours and e-mails from friends who have been victims of various crimes and now feel compelled to warn the rest of us to be safe. How can we be safe I wonder?

We are giving in to the fear. It causes churches to reschedule midnight mass and priests to turn away murder witnesses. It gives rise to notions about which kinds of places are safe to lime in and which kinds of people are likely to rob us. It makes us crawl inside the safety of ourselves, separating us from each other more and more.