International NGO: Trinidad and Tobago has sixth highest crime rate

TRINIDAD AND TOABGO has the sixth-highest crime rate according to the World Population Review.

The World Population Review website placed TT in the position ahead of Guyana, El Salvador, Brazil and Jamaica.

According to its bio World Population Review is an independent non-governmental organisation that “turns complex demographic information into easy-to-understand articles on the population of countries and cities.”

The site said rankings are calculated by dividing the total number of reported crimes of any kind by the total population and multiplying the result by 100,000. The site is not backed by the United Nations or the US. The mailing address on the website is in California.

The top five countries are Venezuela, Papua New Guinea, South Africa, Afghanistan and Honduras.

Newsday spoke with criminologist Dr Keron King who said, being unfamiliar with the website, he could not speak to the method used in deriving at the findings. He added that while all crimes may have been used to arrive at the placement, based solely on TT's murder toll, it remains in the top ten.

He added that Professor Ed Maguire, in an Inter-American Development Back funded programme, found that unless TT moved towards an evidence-based violence reduction policing model, it will remain in the top ten.

“Evidence-based policing is based on the Triple T Strategy: targeting, testing and tracking. Using this strategy the police should be targeting a particular problem, testing law enforcement-related intervention and tracking the results.

"A violence-reduction policy that is evidence-based is wider in that it would include a focus on more of the drivers of violence such as mental health, attitudes and beliefs, education, issues of inequity, rehabilitation efforts at the prison.”

Calls to both the National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds and acting Police Commissioner Mc Donald Jacob for comment on the World Population Review rankings went unanswered.

On TT's placement, the report said, “TT's government faces several challenges in its effort to reduce crime, such as bureaucratic resistance to change, the negative influence of gangs, drugs, economic recession, and an overburdened legal system.”

"There is a great demand for illegal weapons as well, which drug trafficking and gang-related activities fuel.”