The Tribune

By NICOLE BURROWS

At last week’s Free National Movement (FNM) rally, party and Opposition Leader Hubert Minnis suggested that the next general election in The Bahamas, in 2017, will (again) be about crime, Bahamians, and Bahamians or people living in The Bahamas who were/are directly affected by crime.

Specifically, Minnis said to his pom-pom-wavin’, winin’ followers: “This election is about Beverly Wallace-Whitfield, the former wife of our founding father Sir Cecil Wallace-Whitfield, who was gagged, beaten, and robbed in her home. This election, FNM, is about the school teacher who was brutally murdered in her apartment. This election is about the reverend who went to the ATM on a Sunday morning to get money to put in collection and was shot and killed in cold blood.”

All this dialogue thrown left and right, as it was also flung around by Minnis in Parliament, but we have yet to see Minnis and his party present their own comprehensive, sensible, crime-fighting plan.

Minnis, what exactly have we heard from you about your plan to reduce crime in The Bahamas, or are you just politicising the scourge of crime as your incumbent government did in 2012? Are we meant to trust you, too … to trust that you have the answer to the country’s most vexing, spiralling-beyond-control problem?

The FNM roasts the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) about not having the solutions to a persistent (especially violent) crime problem, but the FNM wants to run our country, with Minnis at the helm, a man whose only idea as recent as June of this year was to ‘hang the murderous scumbags’ and to hold a referendum on capital punishment should he become the next Prime Minister of The Bahamas. For good measure, Minnis threw in the fact that we probably need to put children into programmes to teach them how to solve problems.

Specifically, he said: “Our aim … is not just to control behaviour, but to change it by directing their (children’s) energies into positive channels by instituting conflict resolution programmes.”

That’s it? That’s the whole thing. That is Minnis’ and the FNM’s plan to reduce growing criminal activity in Nassau/The Bahamas.

That is not a plan. And if there is more to the plan, being held in secret only for us to know when we vote in 2017, then Minnis is even more ridiculous than I thought he was.

What most of our politicians - and, for that matter, our people - fail to appreciate is that crime and criminal thinking is embedded in Bahamian society, and, as such, it could very easily be unsolvable.

Crime is a result of a corrupt way of thinking, a corrupt way of acting, a corrupt way of doing business. There is a corruption in every crime, such that the two are inextricably connected.

Increasing police presence and further empowering law enforcement is not a sole answer to the problem of crime. Improving the education system is not a sole answer to the problem of crime. Improving economic opportunity is not a sole answer to the problem of crime. These are all helpful things, but unless they’re taken altogether (and, honestly, can they ever be?), they do nothing of consequence to ‘fix’ the crime problem, particularly the issue of proliferating violent crime.

To figure out what will diminish crime to an acceptable type or level, you have to consider the two things that cause crime: dysfunctional thinking and desperation, or sometimes both at the same time.

Dysfunctional thinking is quite obviously a result of a poorly educated people, poorly socialised people, or mentally unstable people.

Desperation is a result of lack or poverty, when a person believes that taking something by force is the only resolution to getting what they need or want.

For clarification, poverty may drive a poor person to steal, but not every poor person will steal because there are poor people who are educated and socialised well enough to know that stealing is not the answer to their problem and in fact only creates more problems. And that is where the dysfunction enters the equation ... with those who believe stealing is a legitimate answer to their problem of lack. Further, economic empowerment might reduce lack/poverty, but it does not exempt a person from dysfunctional thinking, i.e, even those who have means or riches still have warped thoughts. In many instances, it’s their warped thinking that gave them means.

So, really, if you want to ‘fix’ crime, ie lessen it, you have to address the dysfunction and desperation while enforcing laws on the streets and in the courts.

In Minnis’ rally speech, he gave three examples of crime which included two incidents of theft and one of murder. We’re seeing more of the latter which is telling of the cause of these crimes … the real dysfunction of thoughts afflicting so much of our population.

Somehow, committing murder is acceptable to a dysfunctional mind, whether that is the regular condition or a momentary condition of that mind. And this dysfunction is not aided by poor education that would otherwise encourage procedural, rational analysis of a problem to find its solution. The dysfunction is also not helped by poor socialisation which leads to social marginalisation and rejection, translating further into a lack of attention yearned for by offenders who act out in order to get that attention.

Then there’s the worst case of dysfunctional thinking, where a person knows exactly what they’re doing and do it anyway for the hell of it. Maybe we can be thankful that we don’t see much of the latter (yet) but there is not much resolution brought to other conditions that lead to crime or criminal behaviour so that’s not exactly a comfort.

The sad fact is that you cannot stem crime in this country without stemming corruption.

If corruption is an abuse of entrusted power for private gain, it is easy for us to conclude that this is something we see and hear of often in Bahamian society. But you ask the corrupt if they think they’re corrupt. What answer do you think you’ll get? Perhaps you yourself are corrupt, because you accepted something you shouldn’t have. Will you tell on yourself?

Corruption is a way of life in The Bahamas. It is the replacement for qualification and merit. At every turn someone, somewhere, is abusing privilege for economic benefit for self or persons they hold close. “Cuz you’s my boy I ga look out fa you.” Too often, it is the only way things get done.

And this corruption includes giving someone opportunity, or reward, or access to opportunity or reward for nothing, or in exchange for something. But it also includes denying opportunity and reward to someone or a group of people in order to give the advantage of the same opportunity or reward to another person or group of people.

We can stave off corruption only with disclosure, whether it is self-disclosure or whistle-blowing or anything in between. And now you see the problem.

Disclosure plainly identifies the corrupt or corruptible, by identifying conflicts of interest … yet another link to corruption.

Political leaders and Bahamians they represent operate under great conflicts of interest on a daily basis, but they don’t see it that way … for them, it’s just knowing the right people and knowing who should get the reward.

Your leaders, straight up to and including one Perry Gladstone Christie, won’t disclose what is required by law to be disclosed when it is required to be disclosed. That behaviour or response is a fundamental act of corruption. You deliberately deny the system that has been established just to corrupt it with what you think should be done or what you choose to do instead.

With this being the case, and the inseparable connection of corruption to crime, do you really expect your Bahamian people to be any better? They will be no better until the people who lead them are better. And from where I sit, that is a far cry from happening.

A synergistic solution is required to reduce all crime in The Bahamas. It sounds extreme, but it is very real: flush out every bad element with one fell swoop, one drastic action, and start again with whatever … whoever … is left standing.

Otherwise, you can kiss goodbye the prospect of a safer Bahamas.

E-mail: nburrows@

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