The Tribune

“Violence toward others, such as homicide, is an attempt to replace shame with pride.” – Dr James Gilligan, MD.

Dr James Gilligan is an expert on criminal violence, a topic that has preoccupied most of his professional life as a psychiatrist and author writing extensively and passionately on the roots of crime and violence. He once directed the Centre for the Study of Violence at Harvard Medical School.

Dr Gilligan spent 25 years in the US prison system talking to prisoners, their families and prison officials. He has firsthand experience as a prison psychiatrist. He has blended his academic cum medical training and practice with in-depth research.

He has talked to criminologists, police officers, lawyers and others in the criminal justice system, particularly carceral or penal institutions, trying to understand “the motivation and causes behind violent behaviour.”

He has focused on the etiology of murder. Etiology is defined as: “The cause, set of causes, or manner of causation of a disease or condition.”

As we experience another frenzied and seemingly unrelenting period of bloodshed on New Providence, much of the public conversation, and some of the proposed responses, is superficial, unconvincing and self-defeating.

Dr Gilligan has noted throughout his career that proposed solutions like the death penalty and longer prison sentences have generally failed to reduce crime and violence in the United States and other jurisdictions.

It appears that our political leadership over the years has generally failed to understand and to respond creatively and comprehensively to the nature and degree of violence in The Bahamas.

It is highly likely that most of the current and previous members of cabinet do not appreciate the underlying reasons for violence in the country. There have been various crime reports, some of which were useful and had various insights into crime in The Bahamas.

If one asks the members of today’s political and policy directorates about the causes of crime, there is likely to be all manner of garbled and halting responses. The same applies to many of the leaders of the Bahamas Christian Council.

Imagine trying to respond to a matter of economic policy absent a basic understanding of economics.

Correspondingly, most of our political and religious leaders clearly do not even understand basic concepts of sociology or anthropology. How then can they propose long-term measures to address various forms of social dysfunction?

It would be more useful for a prime minister to sit attentively with prisoners, young people, teachers, crime experts from home and abroad, and others to better understand and discuss the causes and experience of crime than it is to sit in a police car looking at the newest technologies.

By the time the police car or hearse arrives at the scene of a horrendous crime, the sociological and other problems have already metastasized. A deeper dive into the roots of violent behavior among Bahamians might yield a number of insights.

One of Dr Gilligan’s more compelling works, written in 1997, is Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic. In the chapter, “Shame: The Emotions and Morality of Violence”, he writes of the mindsets which may result in violent behavior:

“Behind the mask of ‘cool’ or self-assurance that many violent men clamp onto their faces – with a desperation born of the certain knowledge that they would ‘lose face’ if they ever let it slip – is a person who feels vulnerable not just to ‘loss of face’ but to the total loss of honour, prestige, respect and status – the disintegration of identity, especially their adult, masculine, heterosexual identity; their selfhood, personhood, rationality, and sanity.”

Many of our political and religious leaders are adept at understanding how to manipulate, entice or bamboozle voters or congregants with prosperity gospels, patronage, cronyism and “throw me out” rewards.

But they do not more fully understand what it takes to build, form, educate and humanise a person, including many of our exceedingly vulnerable, fragile men who, as Dr Gilligan notes, “[lack] the emotional capacities or feelings that normally inhibit the violent impulses that are stimulated by shame”.

Our leaders would do well to educate themselves about the human nature and impulses behind violence, as well as what is required for human development. They may wish to find local and international experts to inform their thinking and decision-making in addressing crime and violence

They may also consider insights such as this by Dr Gilligan: “The first precondition [for violence] is probably the most carefully guarded secret held by violent men. … This is a secret that many of them would rather die than reveal; I put it that extremely because many of them, in fact, do die in order not to reveal it.

“They try so hard to conceal this secret precisely because it is so deeply shameful to them, and of course shame further motivates the need to conceal.

“The secret is that they feel ashamed – deeply ashamed, chronically ashamed, acutely ashamed, over matters that are so trivial that their very triviality makes it even more shameful to feel ashamed about them.”

“And why are they so ashamed of feeling ashamed? Often violent men hide behind their shame behind a defensiveness mask of bravado, arrogance, ‘machismo’, self-satisfaction, insouciance, or studied indifference Many violent men would rather die than let you know what is distressing them, or even that anything is distressing them.”

This is not soft-headed liberal gobbledygook. Getting tough on crime requires hard and soft power. By example, there are successful prison models that have reduced recidivism by training offenders in various job skills, and coping skills such as transcendental and other forms of meditation.

Most of us are bewildered when it comes to the nature of violence and crime. This lack of understanding is not applicable only to The Bahamas. Crime is clearly complex, requiring multiple responses.

But, in The Bahamas, we generally do not understand the fuller nature of violence. This is why we continue to fail miserably in various areas of social intervention including more comprehensive prison reform, youth and family intervention, and other responses.

How do we stop people from going to prison? What do we do with these mostly men, once they are in prison or released from incarceration? We have made some efforts in these areas. But our efforts are not as comprehensive and as aggressive as necessary.

Here at home, some continue to argue that we do not have a serious crime problem, and that both Bahamians and tourists are not likely to be murdered. This wholly misses several compelling realities.

Foremost, we are a violent society with a murder rate considerably higher than numerous jurisdictions with much larger populations. Additionally, there are a range of other violent offences which do great harm to victims of crime, including domestic violence.

The view that it is the “bad boys” and gang members killing each other ignores the moral and sociological reality and failure that some of our young men, regardless of their familial background, are engaged in such violence.

There will always be criminals and violence in a society. But the level of such criminality and violence in The Bahamas is not inevitable. It can be addressed through sustained and “multigenerational efforts”, in both senses of the term.

There is sometimes an upper class conceit that it is those poor people who are at risk because: “Me and my family are safely ensconced behind our gates and alarm systems.” Such arrogant disregard is part of the moral indifference to our cycle of violence.

Just last week, there were reports of EMS professionals being outfitted with bulletproof vests. Over the decades, the medical professionals at the A&E of Princess Margaret Hospital have attended to many hundreds, if not thousands of Bahamians, who were the victims of shootings and stabbings.

The number of people dying from such wounds would be much higher if we did not have such dedicated nurses, doctors and technicians. Moreover, many Bahamians are victims of violent crimes, stabbings, sexual assaults and armed robberies.

There is a disturbing magical thinking that one is safe as long as one travels along certain routes on our small twenty-one by seven island.

Tell this to those who witnessed the fairly recent double-murder during broad daylight and a highly-trafficked period on Prince Charles Drive, a major thoroughfare. The killings were in the vicinity of a government school, a leading bank, and homes and businesses, as motorists reeled in fear and horror.

We are not only experiencing gangland killings. Some people apparently are being killed in personal disputes. Those living in their isolated mountaintops may try to ignore or rationalize the violence in the valleys and streets of New Providence.

But the violence will not abate, and indeed may increase, if we fail to understand its deep roots and equally fail to realize intelligent, well-resourced and creative responses.

We must not lose hope. There are possibilities. But we must summon the faith and will to save lives and renew our life in common.