Some of the participants in attendance at the CariSECURE Sensitisation Workshop, under the theme ‘Reducing Crime and Violence in Our Communities’ at UN House yesterday.
There are significant gaps when it comes to the collection and distribution of relevant data that would speak to areas such as crime statistics in the region, research into the reasons why certain persons get involved in criminal activity and if some communities are more prone to these types of activities than others.
So states Attorney General and Minister of Home Affairs, Adriel Brathwaite, who delivered the feature address at the CariSECURE Sensitisation Workshop for the Caribbean Citizen Security Toolkit in Barbados at UN House yesterday.
He stated that they certainly do their best in this island, but in spite of this, there is still a significant lack of data and he believes that this is one of the reasons why stakeholder organisations such the Criminal Justice Research Unit strongly supports workshops such as this one.
“Here in Barbados, we do our best, but I think that a part of the reason why the Criminal Justice Research Unit is such a champion of this project is because they recognise that there are gaps and that we can improve if we want to improve. Even across our agencies, whether it be (the) prison, (the) police, the Criminal Justice Research Unit, they will tell you about the difficulty that we often have in terms of soliciting information – or accurate information – from other agencies.”
The Home Affairs Minister stated that this is why it is so important that all of the relevant stakeholder agencies responsible for monitoring and combating criminal activity in this country have at least one representative at sessions such as this one.
“And that is why I began by asking whether or not we had all of the relevant agencies here this morning because we need a holistic approach. We need to have champions across all ministries and across all of the sectors so that when we have a request for information, that it is readily available because we cannot, I repeat this, we cannot create effective policy without the relevant data.”
Brathwaite stated that having such data would be crucial in such areas as assisting the Royal Barbados Police Force and other authorities in tackling crime and violence.
“Even on a simplistic basis, you would have a situation where someone goes to prison and the police have everything about the person’s life, but that is not showing you (critical information on why) they went to prison. So then the police authorities have to scratch in terms of implementing a programme for this individual almost blindly, but the information is already there, it is already across one of our agencies. We need to do better; we have to do better at a national level and at a regional level.”