We have had but two murders in the past three weeks, and as usual the country, rather New Providence, is once again being lulled to complacency. Contributing to this false sense of security are the pronouncements and threats of politicians and policemen to criminals. This has been a common response whenever the country, actually New Providence, is besieged by crime, especially violent crime. No sustained programme, has even been put in place to counteract our criminal behaviour; and so it is difficult to measure the impact of any single programme. Everything seems to be left to periodic road checks and, threats when the ugly head of crime rears its head.
Over the past weeks, talk show after talk show has raised the question about what to do about crime; and of course the general tone of most callers (usually the chronics) is to hang, use the cat-o-nine tail and other dehumanising and degrading means of correction. Punitive methods of rehabilitation have been used for a very long time as a means of correction, yet the beat of escalating crime goes on. Hopefully something will happen after the report from the Prison Reform Committee, though this is hardly likely when one looks at the response to the earlier Crime Commission’s report and many other reports.
When one listens to and reads comments of citizens about solving crime, it appears that solving crime is the government’s responsibility alone, when in fact it isn’t. Crime must be battled from both ends of the spectrum – from the preventative as well as the corrective end. In this regard we would offer a three-principle approach to reducing crime the principle of prevention, subsidiary and restoration.
There is a proverb that says prevention is better than cure, but our overly wrought up New Providence community, which has the loudest voice in the country, is so consumed by revenge that little consideration is given to the foregoing. It means honestly looking at the value system in which we are raising our children. It challenges us to look at the values with which we bombard our children day in and day out, in an honest and consistent way.
Do we raise our children in homes that model circles of peace, or do we raise them on the violent principle of an eye for an eye, and do as I say not as I do? Children raised in in-consistent, emotionally and physically abusive homes are bound to encounter problems in life later.
In raising children parents are advised not to do for them what they should and can best do for themselves. This is the wisdom in which the principle of subsidiarity is grounded. Our government is yet to fully internalise this principle in building responsible citizens. Responsibility is best promoted by providing people with choices and allowing them to suffer the consequences of their choices, but we constantly say that they are not ready. They must be cared for by bid daddy government.
Stable and responsible families establish family rules, in which children exercise their right to choices for the good of the family. The same should hold true for the state, but our system does not allow for the kind of smaller units of the family of islands to make responsible decisions within Family Island rules. Instead we have created bigger and bigger government to create more and more dependency, thus promoting more and more irresponsibility in the citizenry. As long as we continue to pursue a course of huge government control we will continue to see a rise in irresponsible behaviour.
Finally there is a biblical command to those who purport to be righteous Christians. Before coming to the altar to offer and gifts, it says, we should go and repair the hurt and pain that we have caused our brother and sister. This command speaks to the principle of restorative justice, which operates on the philosophy that we’re all created in the mage and likeness of our Creator, no matter how dastard a crime we might commit; and so there is basically no difference between the victim and perpetrator of a crime.
Unfortunately a system of restorative justice is very difficult to pursue in a harsh, punitive, eye for an eye environment such as ours. The level of community sensitivity needed to effect such a system seems absent in our society – at least in New Providence. At the same time the system deprives many communities of the opportunity to transform and heal themselves, because of our large centrally-controlled approach to rehabilitation.
The sooner we start with preventive, values education of our children at home and in school, the sooner we break up government into smaller self-determining units of island, district and city governments, and the sooner we employ transformational approaches to moulding our families into circles of peace where restorative justice is the norm, the sooner will crime de-escalate. Dare we try something different?
Viewpoints, The Bahama Journal
