WILL CRIME EVER STOP?
Who or what determines a crime to be a
crime? According to Oxford Dictionary ‘crime is an illegal act that can be
punished by law.’ Many would claim that society or the government or by
not upholding the law determines a crime. It can also be noted that in the days
of Moses, there were the Ten Commandments; the two that almost always come to
mind are “Thou shalt not kill” and “Thou shalt not steal”; which all had to
abide by. Once these laws are not followed there were consequences for our
actions. In the days of Moses the ultimate punishment was death. In modern
society however there is the concept of
“you do the crime, you do the time”. Punishments range from community
service, hard labour, arrests with or without bail, life imprisonment and even
the death penalty.
Despite the society being publicly aware
of this, crime continues to be a sore point in Trinidad and Tobago and to a
wider extent the Caribbean.(MURDERS
| Trinidad Express Newspaper | Videos.
)Yearly the crime rates continue to grow and thousands of people live in fear
for their lives and those of their family members.
MEAN STREETS: Crime scene
investigators gather evidence around the body of the 300th murder victim for
the year to date on Nelson Street, Port of Spain, yesterday morning. The
deceased has been identified as Winston “Buju” Callender. –Photo: MICHEAL BRUCE
Apart from the many shootings and
killings that plague our society, another grave crime issue in our country is
child abuse and abandonment. Many would recall the article in both the Trinidad
Express and The Guardian newspaper of the twenty- one year old mother from
Manzanilla who reportedly placed her three day old baby in a garbage bag and
placed it by the roadside when she discovered that after feeding and putting
him to rest, he never awoke. The Express headline wrote “Cops find body of newborn baby
in garbage bag” and gave a brief account of what happened and what
supposedly lead the young mother to do what she did. From the account given it
could be presumed that her act was done not deliberately but out of panic. (Cops
find body of newborn in garbage bag | Trinidad Express Newspaper | News
)
In contrast, the headline in the
Guardian Newspaper wrote “Mom dumps baby’s body near river”.
This article was very brief and from the headline one would automatically think
that she killed her baby and deliberately discarded of the body. It also gives
the impression of child abandonment especially in the line which states “The
woman said she fed the child and placed him on a couch while she went to do
other chores” (Mom
dumps baby’s body near river | The Trinidad Guardian Newspaper)
So the question that now follows is what
then triggers an individual to commit a crime and how can this be resolved? No
one really has the answer to why a person would commit a crime. However, there
lies a wide range of possible issues that could be some of the main reasons for
high crime rates in Trinidad and in the Caribbean region. Some of these include
drug trafficking, gang wars, hardened criminals being let out on bail,
unemployment and the high cost of living expenses, the disappearance of family
values and proper upbringing and technological advances that make it easy for
fraud and identity theft.
The drug trade though very illegal is a
quick and easy fix for many youngsters who without proper guidance, little or
no education and no jobs choose to get involved in, in an effort
to make money. Likewise unemployment and exorbitant food prices continue
to be major issues in several countries and this also indirectly promotes petty
crimes such as theft and robbery. In this regard it can be said that it is only
until these issues are nonexistent and every individual makes a conceited
effort to do what is right by law, that crime would become redundant in any
given society.
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