Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:59 AM
Feb 21, 2012 Editorial
People in Guyana, according to a recent report, are most afraid of break-ins, during the night. There was a time when the home was almost taboo. There were no grills and security barriers and in some cases, the homeowner merely placed a chair behind the door to prevent it from blowing open.
People slept very well at nights. Those who had poultry kept a keen ear for people disturbing the poultry. Those houses that were broken into were invariably empty. But there was another side to this; the community knew who would break in and who would steal what. They were the ones who would make the arrests and march the culprit to the police.
That has changed. Homes have been made into veritable prisons. Windows and doors are so heavily grilled that on occasions when fire struck, people were either trapped in their homes and died, as was the case of Laxhmi Kallicharran, or in the event when they were not there, the Guyana Fire Service had a torrid time entering the building to access the source of the fire.
People preferred the risk of being trapped in a heavily grilled home to being surprised in the dead of the night by unwanted intruders. Yet for all the grills, the intruders have become more enterprising. Some have been known to use all manner of appliances to force their way into the homes.
Depending on where the person lives, the intruder would care little about the noise he makes, so confident in his ability to strike fear in his victims and their neighbours. We have heard of cases of people standing outside a house shooting indiscriminately while their colleagues force their way into the home.
Way back in time, entire communities would come out to confront the intruder and when they did more often than not, vigilante justice prevailed. Guns in the hands of the wrong people put an end to community response and the way was therefore clear for the now armed intruder. At one time the government decided to arm certain households in the hope that people would defend themselves. This has not worked very well.
Yet communities are beginning to defend themselves. This process is still slow. Up until the entire gang was arrested, a group of men actually terrorized the community by robbing people quite openly and challenging onlookers to do something about it. Some were openly hostile to neighbours forcing these neighbours to remain indoors even during the daylight hours.
But there are those who say enough is enough. A group went on the hunt for a gang that robbed a businessman in the community. And a high point is the quick response of the police. In recent times there have been reports of the police responding with rapidity previously unknown. They have caught criminals in the act. Failing to catch the criminals at the scene of the crime the very police have been able to track them down in short shrift.
However, there is a problem which if allowed to persist would see a continuation of serious criminal activity. The police may nab the criminals, but the courts are slow to prosecute them. At the same time the jails are full; the result is that the courts mindful of that situation are considering alternative sentencing.
Further, pending the trial and conviction, the courts would grant bail to the accused. This then allows the criminal to return to the streets. Many of these commit other crimes and the cycle continues with the police apprehending them and the courts releasing them on the streets.
In some jurisdictions, once a man is detained for a crime and granted bail only to return before a court, the court then refuses to release him. In Guyana, this may be the solution to the spate of robberies, because the same people commit the crimes.
For now, a gang may have been removed from the streets. It is now left to the police to keep them off the streets and the residents to see that they do not re-enter their community to establish a nest.
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