UN report: Regional governments' efforts to fight crime backfiring

CRIMINAL gangs are being fuelled not only by social isolation and corrupt officials but also by the backfiring of certain actions of the State aimed at curbing crime.

These were the findings of a recent report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) titled Caribbean Gangs: Drugs, Firearms and Gangs Networks in Jamaica, St Lucia, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago.

The report said "Cure Violence" initiatives have generated some success when deployed, using a "public-health approach" to curb gang violence.

However, despite this approach being advocated at last year's Caricom conference on crime held in Trinidad, the UN report lamented it was hardly used, to the detriment of regional countries.

"Despite advocating for a public-health response, several Caribbean governments have simultaneously stepped up their 'tough on crime' measures, enacting states of emergency, promulgating anti-gang legislation, and instituting anti-gang units or authorising heavy-handed policing strategies."

Heavy-handed police-led responses led to mixed responses across the region.

"While tough-on-crime policing strategies have resulted in an increase in arrests and drug seizures, an erosion of trust has occurred within the heavily policed communities.

"There is also concern regarding extra-judicial violence."

The report said St Lucia was now under US Leahy Law sanctions owing to allegations of extra-judicial killings by the police, while extra-judicial violence was also identified in Jamaica and Guyana.

There was no mention of extra-judicial killings in TT.

The Leahy Laws prohibit the US Department of State and Department of Defense from providing military assistance to foreign security force units that violate human rights with impunity.

The report said the four countries' tackling of gangs has had an unseen but detrimental effect.

"Caribbean, US, and EU-backed measures to crack down on gang leadership are also generating unintended outcomes.

"Some gang leaders lower their profile and go underground while others are killed or imprisoned and replaced with ever more violent contenders. As seen elsewhere in the world, gang splintering tends to be violence-generating.

"Several national governments across the Caricom region have expressed concern that drug trafficking, gang fragmentation, and insecurity could worsen in the coming years."

Measures to arrest TT gang leaders have expanded dramatically, the report said, but again with some negative fallout.

"On the other hand, the removal of gang leaders has also resulted in the splintering of many gangs and increased inter- and intra-factional violence as groups compete over territory and drug trafficking routes.

"Heavy-handed measures to tackle criminal groups such as drug cartels and gangs can trigger increased violence, as in the case of TT."

The report said the Strategic Services Agency (SSA) in 2021 predicted "a new violent crime wave" owing to the fragmentation of key gangs that would lead to an increase in murders, injuries, shootings and other violent crimes. Amid this, TT gangs have diversified into new business – fraud, money laundering, robbery, human smuggling, and illegal gambling – and are accessing higher-calibre firearms from domestic sources, the US and Venezuela.

The report lamented the TT Government's cessation of certain peace-seeking initiatives.

"A range of preventive measures, including ceasefires, truces, and informal negotiations, have also been explored in the Caribbean.

"In some cases, truces appear to contribute to short-term reductions in homicide. However, the evidence on their effectiveness is mixed.

"Preventive approaches that deploy trusted intermediaries to disrupt or interrupt violence before it escalates are credited with positive outcomes.

"Cure Violence, a group that treats violence as a public-health problem, has demonstrated positive outcomes in both Jamaica and TT.

"The so-called project Resolve Enmity, Articulate Solutions, Organise Neighbourhoods (REASON) initiative was supported between 2015 and 2017 in TT and is credited with reducing homicides by 45 per cent in 16 neighbourhoods. But funding was discontinued in 2017.

"A follow-up programme called Building Blocks also reduced shootouts between 2020-2022 but was discontinued in 2022."

In contrast to those official initiatives, gangland truces and ceasefires typically only temporarily reduced fighting, but were often violated and were followed by rapid increases in retributive violence.

The report also lamented the effect of social neglect, state neglect and official corruption on encouraging gangs and organised crime.

On social neglect, the UNODC said some gang traditions in Guyana, Jamaica, St Lucia, and TT extended back to the mid-twentieth century.

"Many of the predecessors of the region’s contemporary gangs were in fact 'self-help' and 'neighbourhood improvement' groups that operated in low-income and informal settlements where the State exerted limited presence.

"Whether transnationally connected or operating in a highly localised manner, most gangs emerge in response to criminal opportunity and in conditions of social and economic deprivation."

Further, gangs now address the social alienation of some youngsters.

"And while most gangs seek to generate profits for their leadership, they also play a role in incubating a sense of belonging and identity to the rank and file.

"The composition of gangs is overwhelmingly of younger males, often lacking educational and employment opportunities and deeply suspicious of public authorities. While often short and brutal, gang life offers money, respect, belonging, and access to intimate partners."

The report also detailed instances of how corrupt public officials have facilitated the activities of criminal gangs.

"While a sensitive topic, it is widely recognised that Caribbean gangs frequently collude with state actors and private businesses.

"In the case of the larger gangs and gang federations political and economic elites regularly make use of their services to influence elections in key districts and protect personal and commercial property and assets."

In this allegation, the report cited a 2009 report for the Small Arms Survey, No Other Life: Gangs, Guns, and Governance in TT by Dorn Townsend.
"In exchange, gang leaders may be granted privileged access to public contracts (eg construction) and protection from investigation, arrest, and prosecution."

The report said a few well-connected gangs facilitate the transshipment of illegal commodities – drugs, guns, smuggled migrants and trafficked people – "with tacit or overt support from well-placed politicians, corrupt customs officials, and complicit police officers.

"According to the perceptions of key informants, it is often the smaller players that are charged and incarcerated while those higher up in the hierarchy often find their cases thrown out due to lack of evidence or judges that are compromised.

"The considerable impunity afforded gang leaders has emboldened some to diversify into new businesses, including migrant smuggling and trafficking in persons for sexual exploitation to lawful retail and services with high turn-over including car dealerships, grocery chains, real estate, and pharmacies."

There is limited information on the role of Caribbean business and political elites in facilitating gang activities and criminal markets.

"Representatives from several regional and national intelligence agencies are aware that a small number of business people, often those engaged in import-export activities (eg cars and parts, agricultural produce, and oil and gas), and others involved in high-velocity cash businesses (eg pharmacies, grocers, and casinos) are more likely to be connected to trafficking and money laundering."

This activity may involve bribing port and customs officials.

The report cited public corruption in the high-volume, low-risk transshipment of cocaine from South America to North America and Western Europe.

"These drug shipments involve transnational drug trafficking networks and a small number of gangs and are facilitated by corrupt customs and shipping agents with involvement of some political and economic elite."

Also on the theme of public corruption fuelling gangs, the report said weapons and ammunition were "diverted from police and private security arsenals."

It added, "Some (gangs) may also acquire munition from local police and defence forces, as has been reported in TT.

"The presence of Jamaican and Trinidadian gang members in Florida and New York facilitates access to firearms in states with less restrictive controls and freight-forwarders to ship them in containers."