ANALYSIS
Criminal Justice System Perpetuates Crime
“My belief is that there has been a historical over-reliance on a security- focused approach or what we can call crime suppression, that regional spikes in crime have been traditionally met with harsh policing rather than social approaches to crime prevention and that this has largely been unsuccessful in tackling crime. “The post-colonial environment has created fragmentation and exclusion. There are large portions of Caribbean society that have and are being failed by structural inequalities that are embedded within institutions that have been handed down to us by imperial powers. These are the sectors that are overrepresented in regional prisons; the ones that inevitably come into contact with the justice system. This is not a coincidence.” Turning to corporal punishment, the academic described this as a “relic of British colonial and penal policies” used by slave owners. He said it contravened the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child that most countries in the English- speaking Caribbean have signed and was exposing children to social and psychological problems that could lead to future offending. Furthermore, he said, it was not acting as a deterrent or rehabilitation in the prison system given the high rate of recidivism. “The notion that the harsher the penalty the more positive the impact is an erroneous one. Corporal punishment has long-term negative effects as it relates to violence. Incarceration has long-term negative effects as it relates to crime. If our intention is to prevent crime, then we are doing it wrong. Locking people away and releasing them back into society with no hope of ever becoming a productive member of it again does more to increase crime than anything else.” As an unapologetic advocate of restorative justice, the criminologist suggested the region has hard conversations on these issues. u
by Carol Williams
O ne of the region’s leading the education, police, and correctional system in the Caribbean.
criminologists has charged that remnants of the colonial system continue to permeate
Professor Corin Bailey remains firm in this conviction and says there’re resultant implications that prohibit the region from getting a handle on its crime and violence problem, unless serious conversations are held and hard decisions made. His position is informed by his extensive research and publication on crime and violence in the region, which earned him promotion to the university’s highest academic rank in February 2022 when he was named Professor of Sociology, Crime and Social Inequality. The Jamaican-born criminologist currently serves as Director of the Centre for Criminal Justice and Security of The University of the West Indies. In his inaugural professorial lecture titled “Postcolonial Reflections on the Regional Crime Problem” , held last October at the Cave Hill campus, he said Caribbean society and culture continue to be significantly affected by its colonial past; and he contended that continued application of colonial-influenced measures of oppression and exclusion was not the answer. Professor Bailey cited and agreed with studies showing that Caribbean schools reproduce societal inequalities, and he argued that anything that restricts access to education has a significant impact on crime. Using Jamaica as an example, he pointed to the level of education in the public versus private school system and the entry requirements that facilitate certain
high schools receiving the top performers. He surmised that this system of privilege and structured inequality has resulted in the exclusion of teenagers from poor families, many of whom are intelligent, leading to them being “trapped in a cycle of intergenerational poverty ” and resorting to a life of crime. He said the system of policing also breeds contention between law enforcement and the citizenry, particularly involving marginalised communities. The professor took issue with the use of a paramilitary and coercive style of policing and contended that, while this was exported to the colonies by Britain, it was styled after the Royal Irish Constabulary . He said this approach is erroneous, much like increasing the size of police forces to tackle crime. In fact, he said there was no strong evidence linking larger police forces with improved crime detection. Rather, such measures foster more resentment among vulnerable groups. Professor Corin Bailey Director, Institute of Criminal Justice and Security, The University of the West Indies
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