Crime & Business....

Listening to the contributions from the business community through DOMA, TTMA and the Chamber of Commerce on the scourge of crime and its causes and solutions, it is clear to me that our ruling class is not necessarily made up of members of our thinking class or even our caring class.


No one can undermine the value of the business sector to society in its capacity to stimulate the economy, provide jobs and hope for a people, but in this country the business sector is used as a big stick to clobber the people and this needs to change.The fact of the matter is that, until the business community is willing to understand and admit that crime is as a result of the diminishing and dehumanizing of the individual due to the breakdown of the family through the irresponsible use of media, mind altering substances and promiscuity, the destruction of the community through profiteering and property hoarding specifically from the laundering of the proceeds of the illegal drug trade as well as institutional theft and corruption, the destruction of the dignity of our people through the planned and deliberate failure of what we demand of our education system and the follow on slave wages paid to the under-educated, the obscene profits due to price gouging at every level, and the manipulation of government to keep these things so, makes every statement they make on the issue a lie.


As the primary developer of the individual, if we fix the family the problem of crime will solve itself. There can be no 'fixing' crime if we don't first rebuild the family, as the correlation between the destruction of the family and all the other social breakdowns is undeniable. When we understand this we will understand that the issue here is not about solving crime as it is preventing it in the first place, and as much as a nation is a collection of communities, a community is a collection of families. The State has the power to enunciate much needed family friendly policies, and they all MUST be aimed in some way at the rebuilding and the strengthening of the family or this battle against crime will be lost at the conception stage. If the business community is serious it needs to add its voice at this level, integrate itself into pro-family developmental models and put an end to anti-family business practices.

Some suggestions:

- The Ministry of Finance should be mandated to make it possible for all Trinidadians and Tobagonians to aspire towards owning a home and help them achieve that dream. Nothing builds communities like home ownership and the State through this Ministry has failed the people on this important building block issue from the start.

- Under-education or a lack of education limits employment choice or earning capacity which in turn leads to crime. This particular item is too important to be treated with in one paragraph so I will return to it at another time, but it is included here as a guide to those who are seriously interested in preventing crime as hope and opportunity are two sides to the personal development coin. The state's job in this regard is to provide a multi-tiered performance-based education system that allows for the maximum amount of people to pursue that to which they demonstrate the greatest aptitude.

- The Ministry of Social Development has a fundamental role to play as intermediary and communication channel through which all other efforts should be coordinated. Without accurate information and a clear vision we are going nowhere.

- Culture flows naturally from family based communities and contributes to the overall quality of life of the nation. We cannot allow corporations to hijack and promote certain aspects of our cultures to the detriment of the rest and not expect to pay a price. The Culture Ministry should strive to understand, guide and support the expression of the people, not define it. What is happening to our Carnival and Calypso traditions are as clear and as concise a point as can be made on this subject and we need to take a long hard look at who we say we are in relation to who the rest of the world thinks we are to get a better understanding of where we really are as a nation.

Much that I have written here has been said before, yet our words and our actions fail to match. We need to come back to a place where blue collar and white collar, public sector and private enterprise still see each other as brothers and sisters and part of one nation, because if we don't all the talk in the world is not going to get us anywhere, especially on the issue of the social break that is the direct cause and incubator of crime.