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After hosting a roundtable with over 100 people and stakeholder groups, the People’s Roundtable has compiled all suggestions for tackling crime and intends to travel the country, engaging communities in discussions.
This from the roundtable’s chairman and leader of the Movement for Social Justice, David Abdullah, who presented some of the findings from the group’s January 31 crime summit at a press conference on Monday pending the final report’s compilation.
Among the conclusions from the roundtable, which included at least 13 non-governmental organisations, was that more funding for national security does not properly address the scourge of crime.
“The civil society crime summit shares the consensus that...the issue of crime and violence is not just about more laws, or better policing, or more police officers, or more police vehicles, or more money for national security, or issuing more FULs (firearm user’s licenses).
“That approach to dealing with the problem has not resulted in a safer, more peaceful society. In fact, things have gotten worse. More resources have actually meant less safety. There are many contributing factors to our crisis. Therefore, all of these require urgent intervention, we cannot take a limited tunnel vision approach to the issue of crime and violence.”
To combat crime the group recommended educational, institutional, constitutional and economic reform.
The roundtable came at a time when the opposition United National Congress (UNC) started its own public crime consultations following stalled conversations with the Government.
However, Abdullah said their effort is unlike any other being undertaken.
“Those obviously are party political platforms. They have their agenda. In this country, everybody has their particular agenda. That’s up to them. What we are trying to do though is different.”
“We structured it. The nine working groups that we had. Each looking at a different aspect so people were focused on that and, therefore, it wasn’t just about making knee-jerk statements or soundbite statements or something that sounds good.”
He said the report would be forwarded to the government, all parliamentarians, all state institutions, and academic institutions because some of the findings require policy creation. It was not completed at the time of the press conference but Abdullah told reporters a copy would be forwarded once compiled.
He said the stakeholders intend to take the report into communities nationwide and solicit feedback.
“We will try to popularise all of these ideas and take them out to the communities in town meetings as we build really what we call our grassroots movement. Because as you will see our slogan is power going to the grassroots. So, this initiative of crime is to help us build power from the grassroots, which is the only way that we are going to get those who control economic and political power to make the decisions that are necessary to resolve our crisis of crime and violence.”
The group has not set a schedule for the community sessions yet but the director of the Network of NGOs for Advancement of Women, Carol Noel, said it is expected to be within the first quarter of the year.
Making presentations during the summit were subject matter experts such as Professor Rhoda Reddock, former policeman Wayne Hayde, Project 600 chairman Isa Mohammed, pastor Clive Dottin and deputy director of the Police Complaints Authority Michelle Solomon-Baksh.
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