In today’s edition of The Observer, Lesroy Williams reports: “The allocation for the Ministry of National Security and Immigration for 2009 is $48,728,525, an increase of $9,371,520 or 23.8% over the 2008 allocation of $39,357,005. . . “The Ministry of Justice and Legal Affairs has been allocated $8,076,394 for 2009. This represents a 23.1% increase over the $6,560,557 allocated for 2008.” Together, this is an increase of $10,887,357 over the last year to fight crime in the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis. Those are public dollars, which in one manner or another, were paid by the public to the government. Not money that was plucked from some magical money tree, but money that honest people earned. This is money needed to stop individuals who contribute nothing but grief and fear to this society. It would be unfair to say this money could be better spent. Things have gotten too bad to spend it any other way. At press time, the Federation has recorded 23 murders so far this year, giving us the dubious distinction of having the second-highest murder rate in the world. Woundings have become commonplace. The battle against domestic violence is just getting started. Armed robberies are a growth industry and on Nevis, burglary is flourishing. So the government is at least applying resources where they are needed. What makes this achingly sad, though, is that $10,887,357 is not going to be spent on education, health care, roads or the many other areas that really enhance the quality of life in the Federation. This $10,887,357 is being spent just to try to keep people alive, unharmed and their property protected. It’s hard to say what the public will really get for its money. Better training, better equipment and better pay for the police force is a good place to start. Of course, it is often hard to judge how well the police are doing because of the unnecessary and counterproductive culture of secrecy that surrounds so many of the police force’s activities. To the detriment of public safety, the police only discuss the most serious of crimes ” for example, murder ” when those crimes occur. The lesser crimes ” robbery, burglary, and others ” police almost always refuse to discuss. To learn about the lesser crimes, it has become necessary for victims to come to the press, which is a terrible thing to have to do, but it does give the public a truer picture of what is happening. Disclosure would not solve everything, but it would do a lot to raise public confidence in the police because it would make people feel the police trusted them. In the end, the law enforcement will not be able to eradicate the crime problem. It will take a relentless, remorseless societal intolerance of crime to bring it under control. Criminals will have to be boycotted, their bloody deeds deemed beyond the pale of acceptability and their money ” tainted with the aura of murder ” will have to be rejected. Perhaps that extra $10,887,357 will provide the motivation that is needed.
