In the wake of two horrific massacres, the US$22M Citizen’s Security Programme (CSP) aimed at tackling crime on a variety of fronts was launched yesterday with a call from an IDB official for strong leadership in the Home Affairs Ministry to ensure there is no donor duplication in the sector.
Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee officiated at the launching of the CSP at the Grand Coastal Inn, Le Ressouvenir, East Coast Demerara along with a two-day workshop for senior police officers on the execution of the CSP. He said that at present the security sector is in strong competition with the social sector for national budgetary and donor community resources.
Among the main projects the CSP is expected to deliver are the rehabilitation of 12 police stations, the full functioning of a crime observatory to allow for data analysis and policy decision, the construction and operationalising of a forensic laboratory; computer training for members of the police force in a newly-remodelled and rehabilitated computer classroom and a pool of international experts assisting the Police Commissioner in the modernisation of the Guyana Police Force.
IDB Country Representative Marco Nicola said in an overview that the programme, which is being funded with an IDB contribution of US$19.8 million, has as its main goal enhancing citizen security and coexistence by contributing to the reduction of crime, violence and fear in Guyana.
He called for strong leadership in the Ministry of Home Affairs in coordinating the different donor activities in the security sector to avoid any possible duplication and to maximise the resources made available by the government and the international community. Nicola noted that the donor community was actively supporting this sector: the British government through the Department for International Development’s Security Sector Reform Action Project (SSRAP) and the United Nations (mainly through UNDP and UNICEF) with social cohesion programmmes.
He noted, too, that the IDB has financed operations dealing with violence prevention and citizen security in a number of other countries, citing Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, Uruguay, Guatemala, Peru, Chile, Honduras and Nicaragua.
Some, in the Latin American region, have been completed and have yielded significant results. The key lessons learnt from them have been included in the design of the Guyana programme.
He said it was in this context that the government requested the IDB’s assistance in developing a crime and violence prevention programme, which forms part of an overall country security strategy.
He said it was worth mentioning that the programme was part of an institutional and policy reform effort to improve the business environment and Guyana’s competitiveness.
In addition to supporting the formulation and implementation of the 2006 National Competitiveness Strategy (NCS), he said, the IDB was working with the government in agriculture diversification and justice sector programmes aimed to strengthen business creation and foreign and domestic investment.
Trajectory
Jorge Lamas of the IDB technical and professional team, said regional studies suggest that the trajectory of violent crime in Guyana was similar to the patterns experienced by Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, which have had fairly high and steadily increasing incidence of gun use in the commission of violent crimes, and a higher ratio of violent crime to property crime.
Lamas noted that homicide rates in Guyana, between 1974 and 2001, have fluctuated around 10-15 in every 100,000 persons (except for 1983 when it was 22 in 100,000 and 25 in 100,000 in 1991). In 2002 and 2003, the infamous jail-break year and its aftermath, the rate increased to 27 in 100,000.
There was also a rising trend in robbery rates.
Growing concern with crime and violence in Guyana has placed citizen security and crime reduction among the leading policy priorities of the national authorities, he said. However, discerning the true extent and nature of crime and violence was not possible owing to a lack of reliable and timely data, which inhibits the ability of the government to develop informed policies.
Lamas said the CSP strategy was two-pronged.
In the short term, actions are based at the community level to promote social cohesion and resident participation with immediate effects, and in the medium term, they are based on data collection, analysis and evaluation of violence-based interventions.
The latter, he said, will develop evidence-based crime and violence prevention strategies and monitor trends through the development and implementation of an integrated information system to address critical gaps in knowledge. Training will be provided to build capacity in data analysis and promote the adoption of strategies that address key risk factors.
Enhanced information will assist in the implementation of prevention initiatives that address factors leading to violence; situational crime prevention strategies which diminish opportunities for crime by modifying the situation in which the offending occurs, and building an environment less conducive to crime; and community strategies that involve joint ownership by local residents, national and local governments and civil society of crime and violence prevention.
Pilot
The programme has a pilot phase with an urban focus covering communities with various types of crime and violence in Regions Four (Demerara/Mahaica) and Six (East Berbice/Corentyne), which are populous and have high rates of crime and violence, a high proportion of youth, single parent families, high school dropout rates, inadequate childcare and a lack of integrated community services, which further exacerbate risks of violence.
Evaluations of these pilot interventions, he said, will provide the information necessary to determine how effective the early impacts of these interventions are in reducing crime and violence.
Because of the weakness in data collection in the Ministry of Home Affairs, he said, sectoral and comprehensive national policy formulation based on reliable crime and violence data was not feasible. There is no information system that integrates forensic medicine, crime investigation and policing in general and the prosecution of cases.
In addition, the ministry has systemic weaknesses in the areas of strategic and operational planning, organizational, human resources and goods and service management, financial administration and internal control. Deficiencies in these areas, he said, reduce its overall performance, discourage long-term institutional planning and result in procedural and process-related inefficiency.
With regard to communities, Lamas said that when provided with appropriate methods, they are capable of identifying priority risk factors for injuries and selecting sound interventions for preventing violence.
Training in communities, he said, would provide guides on how violence is identified in the community; the most effective ways to approach the prevention of violence; how to work in partnership with the police to improve police-community relations; how to access existing resources; how to care for neighbours who have been impacted by violence and provide education about their rights and responsibilities under the law, parenting skills, and anger management for teens, among other activities.
He noted that the lack of adequate resources, particularly academically trained personnel, has hampered the performance of the GPF resulting in a reliance on incident driven, reactive approaches, and limited ability to analyse crime and violence patterns, incidents, problems and causes.
He said that the organisational infrastructure of the police force needs to be redesigned to support a pro-active capability.
Such an approach, he said, would allow for the resources of the police force to be directed to the resolution of problems and issues in a mor
e sustainable and accountable fashion and would address the needs and concerns of communities, greater professionalism in police matters and generate confidence in the public. (Miranda La Rose)