IS THE CRIME SITUATION GETTING BETTER?

 IT IS sometimes very difficult to understand exactly what the TT Prime Minister, Dr. Rowley, means when he makes certain comments. For example, he said that there had been 29 fewer murders that there had been in a previous time period and that this therefore was evidence that his handpicked Commissioner of Police was being effective in her controlling crime in this country and that his confidence in his Minister of National Security is justified.

Well, that is all well and good, and might well be true. But how are we to know? The statistics on crime are not published or are not easily available. I suppose that we ought to be grateful to Dr. Rowley & Co.  that the most awful crime statistic seems to be going down (according to them). Why this is so is left unexplained. Were there more arrests? More convictions? What exactly has caused this particular statistic to drop by 5 percent? I suppose that the point is that it is dropping and why it is going down is because of "improved policing". But the message clearly is that we don't need or deserve any kind of explanation. Put up and shut up, is the message.

But If that is so, why does everybody that I talk to feel more afraid now than before? Let me put it this way: 8 years ago everybody knew somebody who knew somebody who had been a victim of some sort of crime. Today it is a lot closer: everybody knows somebody who has been a victim of some sort of crime. Check it yourself and see. Nobody is going to say that they don't know anybody who has been a victim. Now, if that means that there has been an improvement in the suppression of crime that would be most surprising indeed. On this fact it is not possible to say that things are improving even if the actual murder rate is going down. (By the way, what exactly counts as a murder? How is this particular statistic calculated? Is murder defined as an unlawful killing? Does it include unlawful police killings? Or is it that we simply don't deserve any type of explanation at all?)

One reads in the newspapers and sees on television our leaders led by the Crime Minister and backed up by his underlings saying in effect that they are working very hard to contain the problem and have been seeing some light at the end of this particularly long and dark tunnel. This is in direct contrast with how people are seeing (and feeling) the situation. But the media is soft on the Government and collectively they are not critical - although to be fair, there are  many more critical articles appearing than there used to be. Question: is this last fact evidence that the media is slowly coming around to the realization that the crime situation is indeed getting worse and not better as is being claimed by the Crime Minister & Co.? Indeed, is the crime situation really getting better?