Crime watch

AS CONCERN GROWS ABOUT the recent spate of violent crimes, a criminologist warns that the problem is not for the police alone, while the Attorney General says he is not sure that joint police/army patrols will address crimes against visitors.
Yolande Forde who is trained in techniques of spotting potentially harmful behaviour from early, said that every time there was a cluster of serious crimes it was accompanied by public outcry. However, she said, very little attention was paid to the underlying problems that led to crimes.
The former head of the National Task Force on Crime, said: “The concept of dispositional crime prevention is rooted in the understanding that crime is first and foremost a behavioural problem, not simply a law enforcement issue and to this extent true prevention rests in addressing the causes of such behaviour.
“And since the police do not cause criminal behaviour per se, then crime prevention . . . cannot rest primarily with a law enforcement agency . . . no matter how great a job that agency might or might not be doing,” Forde said.