Force calling a few good men

HUMAN NATURE being what it is, a police force is an indispensable part of most civilised countries, and if it is to be an effective force, then there has to be an adequate number of officers to maintain law and order, and to enforce the laws made by the country's lawmakers for the better protection of the society.

It is therefore bad news indeed when Minister of Home Affairs Freundel Stuart announced recently to the Press that this island might have to recruit police officers from beyond these shores, or hire more females. The reason given was simple. Not a sufficient number of young men were applying to join the Royal Barbados Police Force.

This is a serious matter, but with the number of possible career openings available to young men nowadays, large swathes of them might not be eager to don the uniform of a disciplined force and take the kind of risks to personal safety inherent in the career of a police officer.

The young men's trek to gaining a university degree and pursuing careers in some other profession in which there is hardly any risk to limb and life, as opposed to becoming a police officer, is perhaps one of the prices we have to pay as a society for the large social and economic development which has taken place in our country.

Time was when entry into the force was a way out of poverty and one of perhaps two avenues of social mobility for young males, the others being teaching and the civil service.

That era has passed. Independence has brought in its wake home-grown policies which have led to greater choice of careers, and becoming a police officer is now low down on the totem pole of many of our young men.

That is bad enough as it is, but the greater worry comes from other comments made by Mr Stuart. He remarked that one of the reasons for the smaller numbers of recruits was due to a more rigorous background check. He also spoke to a more disturbing issue: "A lot of people cannot pass a simple drug test and have social habits that could not make for good policing if they were admitted to the force. So the recruitment process is a serious one."

This is a very serious state of affairs, because it speaks to a wide spread of habits in the wider community that are inimical to the building of a cohesive society. The force, drawing its recruits from such a pool, is bound to be affected in recruiting as well as in trying to maintain law and order in a country that is becoming an increasingly rumbustious one.

The likelihood of recruiting officers from beyond our shores may well come to pass because, as Mr Stuart disclosed, Barbadian women in higher numbers than their male counterparts were applying to join the force; but there were existing issues of supporting mechanisms for mothers and their children that would need to be rectified.

In times past, this island exported its teachers and police officers to our sister islands; but as things now stand, Mr Stuart and his Cabinet colleagues will have to bite the bullet and import recruits from the region.

Policing is a profession which requires members of both sexes within its ranks, but given that the majority of criminal offences are committed by males, functional commonsense dictates that an overwhelming preponderance of females may not be appropriate, and that the exigencies of the situation cannot be met simply by recruiting local females.

We understand Mr Stuart's concerns and support his thinking, but importing recruits from other societies to police in this society will be a challenge, not unlike that of pouring new wine into old wine skins. And yet the minister must act, because the situation cannot remain unresolved.