“Three Things I would tell the New Minister of National Security”

If I ever had the opportunity to have a sit down with our new Minister of National Security, Mr. Jack Warner the following is what I think I would tell him.

Firstly, it’s not your job to ‘eradicate’ crime.
Crime is a universal phenomena says Emile Durkheim (one of the founding fathers of Sociology). It was here before you arrived and chances are it will still be around when you are dead and gone. If you interpret your job as that of a savior whose saving mission is to rid this nation of crime. I can assure you that failure lurks at the door and you will undoubtedly be sacrificed. So please don’t come out the gates waging a war on crime. Wars on crime generally do not work, just look at the war on crack cocaine in the US. Instead your time would better be spent constructing a more peaceful society and working towards the repeal of joint army-police patrol. We need more peaceful and inclusive justice workers and a justice system that is progressive enough to turn its back on the adversarialsim that has so long characterised it.

Secondly, it would be worthwhile for you to accept that crime and criminality are socially constructed. In our society there are crimes in the streets and crimes in the suites. Unfortunately, thanks to media sensationalism, street crime preoccupies our minds and fuels our fear ;so much so that when we discuss crime we only talk about street crime perpetrated by young lower-class black men. As a result of this, all our crime plans are targeted to this population. When in reality the crimes in the suites, the crimes of the powerful are much more violent and harmful to our society. Therefore the same vigour that you seek to deal with street crime should be extended to white-collar crime. Don’t be duped into thinking that only one socio-economic class commits crime. Let’s de-politicize crime and truly examine it for what it is. Namely that crime is a wound that justice should be healing (Pepinsky, 1991) both in the streets and in the suites. 

Thirdly, the Criminal Justice System is racist, sexist and classist and it needs to be abolished. Poor black men are unduly targeted by the police when compared to their wealthy, non-black counterparts. In addition because of their economic standing they often cannot afford adequate legal counsel and undoubtedly lose their cases against the State. The sentences for the harmful acts that they engage in are usually stiffer that those of privileged offenders; resulting in the punishment of the innocent. Therefore this system is not just faulty but it is ‘criminal’ because its certainly not ‘just.’ I guess its rightfully termed a ‘Criminal’ Justice System.

And as this sit down comes to an end I would leave him with the following thought influenced by a very controversial quote. It appears to me that the Trinbago “society secretly wants crime, needs crime and gains definite satisfaction from the present mishandling of it!” (Menniger, 1968).