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By Hilbert Haar
Minister Grisha Heyliger-Marten – responsible for tourism and economic affairs – has called an emergency meeting of the justice department, the police and the public prosecutor’s office. The objective? The minister wants to get a complete picture and to make a concrete plan for the protection of citizens, companies and the economy.
In itself, this is a commendable initiative. The call for this meeting comes after what has been described in a report on koninkrijksrelaties.nl as “a strong increase in criminality.”
Said report mentions that criminals are becoming more violent, so tackling this issue does not seem to be a bad idea.
At the same time, that call for an emergency meeting raises some questions. St. Maarten has seen its share of violent crimes during the past decade, and probably longer. The minister was quick to state that the call for this meeting does not mean that our island is unsafe. That’s no surprise, given the fact that our economy heavily depends on income from tourism.
Minister Heyliger-Marten is, not without reason, concerned about the damage social media footage of some of these crimes inflicts upon St. Maarten’s reputation. In other words; it could scare visitors away. Fair enough.
During the emergency meeting the minister wants to discuss, among many other issues, the deployment of police officers at hot spots. The participants in this meeting can talk all day long about these issues, but one question will remain unanswered: what is the solution?
Anybody who thinks that criminality can be brought under control with – for instance – more police on the streets is, at least in my mind, slightly delusional. To the participants in the meeting who are thinking about short term solutions I would say: forget it.
There are no short term solutions.
I am not in a position to advise the authorities on anything and the Unpaid Advisor (the late and great Gerard Bijnsdorp) is unfortunately no longer with us. But I am still ready to share some of my thoughts and leave it up to my readers whether they are valuable or not.
The first thing we ought to think about is: why do armed robberies happen? Why are criminals (usually young people) doing this?
Answering such an obvious question is not easy, but I’ll give it a shot. People who have nothing to lose, will do whatever they have to do to get what they want. Why do we have such people in our midst? In my mind, it is due to poverty, plain and simple.
For people who have a job it is a challenge to make ends meet at the end of the month. For those who are unemployed, this is impossible.
Next question: why are people unemployed? The most likely answer is, according to me, that they lack qualifications. If you do not know how to hold a hammer, you will ever become a good carpenter and if you do not have the right attitude you will never be able to hold a job in our tourism-oriented service industry.
Solving this problem is possible, but it will never happen in a heartbeat. It will take time. To do this, we need to take a good hard look at our education system. What is the quality of our teachers? What do children learn in school? How many of them drop out and for which reasons?
Here we return to the heart of the problem: poverty. If parents have to work two jobs, or double shifts, to keep a roof over their head and food on the table, there is not a lot of time left to support and encourage the study of their children, or to supervise them.
And we all know what happens next: children who are left to their own devices take to the streets, and before you know it they join a gang. You can’t even blame those kids for doing that because they want to belong and being a member of a gang offers them security, something their hardworking parents are unable to provide.
Crime is predictable in the sense that those who break the law are always looking for the weakest spot. If we put a policeman in front of every jewelry store on Front Street no criminal in his right mind would think of robbing one of those places. They will simply go elsewhere, where there is no police officer in sight. In other words; increasing police presence in one place puts other places where they are not present at a higher risk. And with the limited resources our police force has at its disposal, it is impossible to put an officer behind every lamp post.
I come to a sad conclusion now. Our authorities will be unable to come up with a simple short term solution – because such a solution does not exist. Out community has a long way to go and the first steps on that long road are finding ways to eradicate poverty and to drastically improve our education system. It is a huge challenge, but let’s face it: we have to start somewhere.
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