That World Bank crime report

That study on crime in the Caribbean produced by the World Bank tells people in this region little they didn't know.

We have long known that the region's murder rate is among the highest in the world; that crime and violence are a major and expensive public-health issue particularly affecting young people; and, that criminal violence circumscribes growth and, therefore, helps to perpetuate underdevelopment.

And what is so for the rest of the region is mostly in greater measure in Jamaica and of larger consequence. Indeed, this study calculates the homicide rate in the region, as an average of the 21 countries surveyed, at 30 per 100,000 population.

In Jamaica, the homicide rate is closer to 50 per 100,000 and the country spends closer to $1 billion a year treating trauma patients. Other studies have also suggested that crime shaves about five per cent a year from economic output.

So, we are poorer than we need to be because of crime and are aware that this is a problem to be addressed not only by normal policing methods that is important. It demands a multifaceted interventions to help bring alienated young people back into the mainstream.

But while this report tells us little that is new, it is important, particularly for the attention that it has received and the onus it places on developed countries to help in fixing the region's crime problem. For, as the study makes clear, this is not only a Caribbean issue, a problem that is solely home-grown.

Importantly, it highlights the fact that much of the crime in the Caribbean has its roots in the drug trade, the region being an important transhipment point for cocaine heading from Latin America to the United States, Canada and Europe.

In the case of Jamaica, it is widely known that many, if not most, of the illegal guns that come to the country and are responsible for most of homicides here, find their way to the island on the back of the drug trade.

There are now important issues here, the simpler one first. Most of these guns, especially in our case, come from the United States. But this newspaper does not believe that America, as we have argued before, does enough to stem this trade and to spare us the damage done by this weapon. They hide their effete efforts behind the argument of the right of U.S. citizens to bear arms, which, really, is an acquiescence to an influential gun lobby that is against any form of serious firearms control.

Happily for America, its homicide rate nowhere approaches Jamaica's. But hopefully, incidents like the Virginia Tech shooting may spur its citizens to demand action before it is too late.

The more fundamental point is that criminal violence in the Caribbean gets a fillip from the narcotics trade, as part of a supply-and-demand arrangement. Narcotics use is relatively low in the region, including in Jamaica. This region, aided by its geography, is part of a supply route because of demand in developed countries' markets.

As much, therefore, that Jamaica and the Caribbean have to fight crime, those who contribute to the problem have to contribute to its solution - by what they do at home and through the provision of resources to the Caribbean.

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