It’s the media’s job now, to make people feel safe

It’s the media’s job now, to make people feel safe – Ramjattan

Aug 14, 2019 News

Crime has been on a steady decline. The country is becoming more secure. It’s the job of the media now, to make sure the public understands that. That’s the opinion of Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan.

Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan

In an exclusive interview with Kaieteur News, the Minister said that Government is doing its job to mitigate the prevalence of crime via several preventative and punitive measures.
As a matter of fact, the statistics provided by him shows that crime has been declining steadily.
In a recent radio interview, called INSIGHT, the Minister provided statistics for the total number of serious crimes per year. For the years 2011-2013, he said that the numbers were 3,823; 3,760; and 4,204 respectively. Then from the years 2016-2018, the numbers were 3,330; 3,036; and 2,681 respectively.
Ramjattan opines that the media continues to report sensationally on crime, and that that creates the perception that crime isn’t on the decline. He said that the media has the responsibility to ensure that it reports on the measures Government has been taking, and to ensure its statistical reports on crime are accurate.
The Government with support from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) had embarked on an initiative to reform the Guyana Police Force (GPF) from an incident-driven reactive institution to one that relies on analyses of patterns, incidents and problems for prevention.
The Public Security Ministry also recently concluded a national consultation to agree on a crime and violence, mitigation training programme, for schools.
The initiative, a component of the 10th European Development Fund for CARIFORUM Crime and Security Cooperation Programme, is aimed at identifying the sociological conditions that create environments of crime and violence, mitigating those, and teaching young people better so that they aren’t predisposed to criminal behaviour.
And in Georgetown, where more than half of all recorded cases of crime occur, the Government has installed a Smart City System, a component of the $32M National Broadband Project sponsored by the Ministry of Public Telecommunications, through a loan from China. That initiative aims to provide high-tech surveillance of the City’s commercial areas, where there is a lot of wealth circulating.
Those and many other initiatives are being spearheaded by Government. But if the media doesn’t report accurately, said the Minister, then people will not feel safe.
He had referred to his readings of work by Steven Pinker, a renowned Cognitive Psychologist at Harvard University. Ramjattan said that Pinker, in his book, Enlightenment Now, wrote of a similar happening in New York, where the crime rate from 1995 to 2015 went down, but the perception among the general public was that crime had doubled.
Pinker has said that crime is on a decline the world over, but that the way information is disseminated has created the perception that crime is at an all-time high.
“So that is what we’re going to have in Guyana.” Ramjattan said.
Continuing, the Minister accepted that Guyana is situated in a generally dangerous region.
“Our crime rates, especially our murder rates, are higher than even war-torn Syria… It’s unbelievable, but it is something that is true; 56,000 murders occur in Brazil every year, that is far more than the people dying in the Syrian War.
Honduras went up to 68,000 one year. In Jamaica, the homicide rate is about 55 per 100,000 people; they had about 2,400 last year. Trinidad is extremely high, again reaching about 38 to 39 per 100,000 people.”
But for the region, he has said that Guyana has a commendably low rate of crime.
“In Guyana, it is 15 [per 100,000]; one of the lowest.”