Keynote Address by H.E. Dr. IzBen C. Williams to National and Regional Leaders and other high-level officials of the Caribbean Community of Nations, attending the Regional Symposium on Violence Prevention as a Public Health Issue, and its related Crime Challenge, at Trinidad’s Hyatt Regency, 17-18 April 2023
It all started last week, when I had another flare of my recurrent joint problems, which are usually triggered from stress at the workplace that appears to be going from bad to worse. I have been trying to wean myself off steroids for the inflammation in my joints over the year, but each time I… Read More
The first recorded conference on crime was convened in 1989, “THE NEW CRIME WAVE – A NATIONAL CONCERN” when staff at the Community Development Division brought together government officials, school authorities, community groups, law enforcement and magistrates to examine the trends in juvenile delinquency and to implement measures designed to reducing its incidence and to indicate that if immediate action was not taken to stem the tide, the nation would be confronted with “a new crime wave.”
Attorney General, Mr. Tapley Seaton expressed the view “Fortunately the majority of them live worthwhile and productive lives, but the minority, if left to their own devices will soon blossom and overtake the majority.”
Senior Magistrate, Mr. John Lynch Wade “cautioned that in five years persons will not be able to walk the streets”, reducing by five years the observation of the probation staff whose prediction was ten years.
The Deputy Commissioner of Police, Mr. Edward Hughes, in his presentation on “Police Procedures” opined …… “if things continue to go unchecked, soon, individuals will probably be unable to walk down the streets without being molested”
During the years leading to 1989 period, criminal activity was at a minimum, no one even noticed. However the incidence of non attendance at school, maternal deprivation, family dysfunction and child neglect, juvenile offending were clear warning signs that a new crime wave was on the horizon.
The rate of Juvenile offending was, in 1990, hovering around 1.2% of all offences. In a short time span of some eight years later 1998, the rate of offending by juveniles had increased by about 17% and in 2004 by 66%.
It would appear that the hard evidence is consistent with the 1989 forecast and the prediction of the conference was “spot on.” The onslaught of criminal activity (not juvenile offending) was unleashed on the citizenry as predicted by the conference.
There can be absolutely no doubt that the Federation for several years has been experiencing unprecedented levels of criminal activity and in serious proportions, which none of its citizens or residents is willing to endure.
It is painfully obvious, that the country has not been able to apply any remedy with the degree of efficiency and effectiveness necessary to instill confidence in the adequacy of its response to crime. This has resulted in a rather uncomfortable situation in the extreme, for all residents who continue to hold out hope and wish that its incidence is reduced to more tolerable ranges.
Long term solutions to crime reduction and control, reside not in efforts at better policing, multi-million dollar investments in law enforcement, law revision, stiffer penalties, penal reform, conferences, commissions, councils and inter-ministerial committees but on an a completely new approach. One which encourages and provides tangible support to those institutions which give individuals a place and stake in the community by making it possible for them to play a meaningful role. one which gives them a sense of purpose, a feeling that they are wanted, valued and a sense of belonging•
Crime prevention strategies, therefore, as a matter of course should be built into the planning of all social and economic programs. This measure would have the effect of mitigating the negative effects of criminal behavior on development and progress. Such strategies must include primary prevention which is designed to stop the problem even before it starts.
Through a process of early intervention, action must be taken so that anti social behavior, personal, family or community problems are minimized or do not arise at all. All of the agents of formal and informal social control; the family, the community, the school, the church, legislation, the criminal justice system, the media are critical in crime reduction and control. Any effective response to controlling and reducing the intolerable levels of crime must be rooted in calculated efforts to arrest and repair the corrosive effects on these agents.
The perspective that VPA promotes revolves around three theoretical models: the typology of violence, the public health approach and the ecological framework. These models guide understanding, research and action for violence prevention. The typology is a tool to help organize thinking about the types of violence and the ways in which violence occurs. The public health approach offers practitioners, policy-makers and researchers a step-wise guide that can be applied to planning programmes, policies, and investigation. Finally, the ecological framework bridges these two models, giving a structure to understanding the contexts within which violence occurs and the interactions between risk factors in each of these contexts and between them. The ecological framework shows where and how to apply the public health approach and is useful for categorizing planned or existing interventions to help understand the mechanisms by which they might be working.
Attacking Crime, Violence and Homicide: Unity is Strength Patrick Martin August 31, 2018 The profound wisdom of our culture says, “One hand can’t clap”. Unity, a coalition of political will, is critical to restoring societal peace. Ours is a nation burdened with post-traumatic ailments. Knowing what we are personally experiencing, the citizenry continues to plead… Read More
The simplest truth of the matter is that we have a systemic regulating or governing structural value disorder of money sequencing of value the has been given primacy over life sequencing of value, and which has been unintentionally designed to put money profit over life profit. We have in effect been unsuspectingly complicit in socially and financially engineering a life-blind system that in effect legally operationalizes: 1) the legitimization and institutionalization of corporate rights over human rights, over animal rights, and ultimately over nature’s rights; 2) the legitimization and validation of money-value cost efficiency over and above life-value ecological, societal physical input-output and human developmental efficiencies, and 3) the legitimization of the extraction and privatization of the money-value gains and the dumping and socialization of the life-value losses and 4) the legitimization and institutionalization of moral-hazard or no life-skin in the game for the transnational private corporations as they are protected by limited liabilities laws and public taxpayer bailouts. This practice of persistent sincerely misguided self-deception only entangles us further if left unseen, tabooed and blinkered out in all of our de-liberations!
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave…when first we practice to deceive.” – Walter Scott
As written by Prof John McMurtry in email correspondence of a work in progress entitled “Reversal of Human Evolution / The Global Market Wars on Public Knowledge” in the section entitled:
“No Accountability, No Evidence, No Rule of Life-Protective Law
Yet the globe-resource looting transnational corporate rich are plainly the most directly responsible agents of this greatest of all crimes against life on earth. They have gotten away with it for a long time and become ever richer at the expense of all the species. “Lacking both a body to be kicked and a soul to be damned”, British Lord Chancellor Thurlow said long ago of private corporations, “they therefore do as they like”.
This Big Lie will only persist, and the entanglement of deception will only get worse, and life-destabilization will only ratchet up to a higher notch once there are lacunae in our understanding of this substratum of collectively orchestrated life-incoherent collusion due to this system value disorder. Again, this is going to be a very painful process to accept, because many of us have invested much of our careers in destabilizing our spheres of influence while thinking we were doing good. This is not time for blaming anyone as the lacunae of ignorance of our sincerely misguided missteps have been spotlighted as a value system disorder that can and must be corrected. We were only doing the best we can given our level of understanding or lack thereof of these deceptions. These lacunae in our public knowledge base have consequences as I have gone to great pains to highlight above, as we have been regulated for the most part negatively by ignorance of what we knew not, rather than positively by the knowledge of how we can do better. But since we now know, there is no going back!!
So here is the most positive side of any painful Truth and the Reconciliation of this Painful Truth-Seeking Exercise, as expressed in the timely and prescient quote by Prof John McMurtry:
“Knowledge always win in the end, but not unless and until it is known.” – Professor John McMurtry
Again, the Truth that we have been living and are enslaved to Big Lies will always hurt, as some of us cannot handle the truth because of cognitive dissonance. It is only in the public revelation of this Truth, would we be able to emancipate ourselves from this form of mental slavery and break-free from the shackles of ignorance and finally be truly set free!
NATIONAL CRIME REDUCTION AND PREVENTION STRATEGY (PDF Report) Table of Contents Acknowledgement Introduction: Summary Report on Symposium Comprehensive National Crime Reduction and Prevention Strategy Outline of Crime Reduction and Prevention Strategies Proposed by Stakeholder Groups to Address the Various Roots of Crime Miscellaneous Strategies and Recommendations Tabulating Crime Statistics to Capture Roots of Crime Data Appendix… Read More
Seventeen Patrick Martin, MD Student & Resident Citizen Seventeen year olds are children in late adolescence. They should be buried in books or software development, not in a grave. They should be taking shots at goal or throwing the shot put, not shooting or being shot at. The nation continues to reel under the burden… Read More
I was honoured to be invited and to attend the “Uprooting Crime and Violence” National Crime Reduction Symposium today. The keynote speaker – Dr Neals J Chitan, PhD – a Crime Reduction Specialist, introduced us to the twelve psychosocial roots that feed prevalent crimes. Also in the breakout sessions, I was in the company of several esteemed ladies and gentlemen where several fundamental issues were raised and discussed.
Although Dr Chitan hinted that almost all of these psychosocial roots centered around disrespect, I had a nagging feeling that something more fundamental lay hidden in plain sight among and under these roots crying out for identification. Although one would have thought that this disrespect originated from the troubled youth onto themselves and society at large, I have come to realize that this disrespect has been projected onto our youth by our dysfunctional economic and political policies and players of that same society.
Let me explain!!
Rough Dem Up! Patrick Martin, MD Citizen& Student February 6, 2017 An official directive to “Rough Dem Up” may be unpolished but exasperation over unrelenting violence is justified. Criminal activity appears immune to communal supplication and change in government. Too many citizens are held hostage in their homes suffering psychosomatic ailments such as panic attacks,… Read More
Source: Holt-LunstadJ, Smith TB, Layton JB (2010) Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review. PLOS Medicine 7(7): e1000316.
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316
