The most visible feature of the changes wrought by the escalating crime situation in Belize is the physical barriers we erect in an effort to keep ourselves and our families safe. Every home and business that can afford to is barricaded behind steel bars and shutters. Armed guards stand duty outside corner shops and cameras attempt to capture the faces of the criminals on tape. We spend a fortune on these physical barriers but still they fail to make us feel secure. However, the invisible mental barriers we erect may have a more lasting and negative effect on life in our beloved Jewel.
These mental barriers may be necessary, but they change the way we live our daily lives and lessen our enjoyment of life. They make us distrustful and suspicious and less willing to empathise with the plight of others. We no longer give rides to people on our highways; we are wary of people who approach us for information; we lock ourselves in our houses at night and no longer socialise with our neighbours; we often do not attend cultural and social functions that used to give us great pleasure; older folk no longer dare to reprimand children and young people when their behaviour gets out of hand; we are unwilling to give evidence to the police for fear of reprisals; we even ask relatives (especially young men) to move out of the house if they are seen to bring danger to the household. But no matter what mental and physical barriers we erect, danger still seeks its victims out and when the young gunmen can’t find Johnny they instead “ketch ee shirt”.
Over the past weekend, a weekend when patriotic spirit was high, a child of eight died as a result of wild gunfire that was presumably targeted at her uncle – an uncle who no longer lived in the house. Another older man was killed for no apparent reason unless one considers that as the father of a rogue cop turned gunman he became an alternate target. Two young men who may or may not have been the actual intended targets also died. No physical or mental barriers could save these victims and all we are left with is the sadness, helplessness and anger that may yet fuel future tragedies.
And what of the young gunmen or gunboys as most of them are. What mental barriers have they erected that allow them to kill so indiscriminately? What could have happened in their young lives to turn them into killers? Can it be that they do not love themselves and therefore cannot love others? No one thing for sure can be to blame and we cannot expect any one solution to help to unravel the tangles in their minds.
One thing we have to do is take them off the streets for a while for their own sakes and that of others. We must not allow mental barriers to prevent us from taking measured and careful action to save as many of these lost souls as possible and in so doing protect innocent lives.
The “big men” who supply the weapons and give the orders are probably beyond hope of reform and they are more difficult to deal with since they are rarely caught in any illegal violent act. In this we can learn from the experience of the US when they were fighting organised crime in the 1930’s and even up to the present.
We must ensure that our laws prescribe long prison sentences for those found guilty of tax evasion and other financial irregularities and then pursue and lock up these gang bosses on those grounds. These laws must also allow that the cases are tried by a panel of experts before a judge since no ordinary jury would have the capacity to follow the twists and turns involved in such complex financial transactions.
Such crimes are not easy to prosecute and we would certainly benefit from technical assistance in the field of forensic auditing to ensure that the prosecution case is strong enough to withstand the best legal minds that ill-gotten criminal proceeds can buy. We must not allow a mental barrier in favour of juries to hinder us from protecting innocent victims of violence.
Most of all we must not allow the mental barriers we erect in an effort to protect our sanity to dehumanise us and make us as cold and uncaring as the perpetrators of crime; for then the villains will certainly have won.
