Dear Editor,
Without reservation, I agree with the general view expressed by Mr Vincent Alexander, long-standing PNC figure, that the discussion over the crime situation must include an examination of the social conditions that gave rise to the gunmen. He feels that society plays a major part in producing the criminals.
Mr. Alexander said we should look back over the past 7-8 years in our examination. But 7-8 years is nothing. To make a proper assessment of the link between society and crime in our recent history must extend, if not further, to the infamous 1980s when the “kick down the door bandits” reigned.
I believed that Guyana’s scholars and economists did not write articles or books on Guyanese society and crime of the 1980s and 1990s, the kind we have seen recently about a “phantom” economy and money laundering. It is a pity because such documentation would have been very helpful today.
Mr. Alexander may wish to ask why such writings were not done. An examination of the 1980s would reveal to us for example, what some of us fellows in the countryside used to call “night-time traffic.” What was “night-time traffic”?
“Night-time traffic” was the movement of goods, money, and personal property by criminals. Those who had the misfortune to “keep vigilante” while others had the luxury of sleeping “whole night,” would tell you that in the 1980s, from backdam to cross-dam to sea-dam, there was serious “night-time traffic” by bandits.
Perhaps this was Guyana’s first “phantom” economy. Of course, who didn’t sleep well couldn’t say “deh ain’t going to wuk” or skulk from class (because you didn’t do the homework). Canecutter or student, you had to get up next morning and get. Society didn’t accept any excuses about crime-fighting. As Mr Chin would say in his remarkable nostalgia articles, “Yuh think it easy!”
An examination would show how murder, rape, assault, and other types of common-law crimes actually promoted an underground economy and the national economy.
On one hand, the criminals marched into society with cash to spend and gold to sell or wear; on the other hand, crime victims had medical bills, funeral bills, and other expenses such as cost to replace household items stolen.
Further, society itself in a strange way had an increase in jobs. One was for welders who were in big demand in the 1980s, because people wanted grille work for their windows.
Then there are other such obvious social realities that were products of crime. For example, some will wear jewellery at a wedding in the country, but would not wear that same jewellery on a trip to Georgetown. It does not matter that he or she was a free man or woman in an independent country.
Naturally, there are many other aspects to crime in Guyana. Still, wherever or whenever one starts the examination, we would all be more informed to tackle the crime crisis from a social perspective.
Yours faithfully,
Rakesh Rampertab
