Caribbean Review: Why Homicide Rates are Rising in Trinidad and Tobago
Prathaan
No one island in the Caribbean isles is alone when it comes to the pressures and overwhelming presence of gangs and gang violence. Yet the response to such forces in the region is often fumbled due to the lack of securitization resources to oppose the gangs and social programs to support the socioeconomic status of citizens struggling with poverty. As a result, most nations in the Caribbean are left with a deteriorating society, a challenge to their sovereignty and struggling to find sustainable solutions that could address the problem.
Sound the Alarm
Alarmingly, Trinidad and Tobago recorded the highest homicide rate in their nation’s history last year, breaking the record set in 2023. For the population of 1.5 million living in the two-island Republic, there were 623 homicides recorded in 2024 and 576 documented in 2023 contributing to a staggering 45.7 murders per 100,000 population.
Homicides in Trinidad and Tobago
Experts point to a laundry list of factors leading to the sixth-highest homicide rate in the world including a revolving door for gang members, the illicit drug and weapons trade, and the poor socioeconomic conditions brought upon by corruption and austerity. But, they can agree that Trinidad requires a society-wide effort led by government action to rid themselves of the entrenched influence of gangs as the government seems to continue to be its own greatest obstacle.
A state of Emergency
At the advice of Prime Minister, Keith Rowley, President Christine Carla Kangaloo declared a state of emergency in the face of the rising homicide numbers in the country on December 30, 2024. As a state of emergency declared by the President may only last for fourteen days, the House of Representatives issued an extension of the declaration by three months on January 13th, expanding policing authority to engage in arrests, searches and seizures without the need for a warrant and the suspension of bail in certain circumstances.
Although the state of emergency may only be a stopgap measure to embolden the policing forces to increase their arrests, critics say that it is an expanded use of power for a government that already abuses it. One of those critics, Caribbean-based economist and advisor, Marla Dukharan, simply says, “The state of emergency in Trinidad and Tobago gives special powers to a government already known for abusing its power. There will be no accountability whatsoever for the results—or lack thereof—of this intervention.”
The influence of gangs in Trinidad and Tobago is overwhelming, especially in the nation’s capital Port of Spain. Similar to the gangs of Haiti that have taken much of the territory of Port-au-Prince, the two supergangs commit most of their violent crimes there and extend them to the impoverished sections of the island and are even institutionalized as legitimate actors. To be clear, there are hundreds of gangs present across the two islands yet they mostly fall into two umbrellas: The Muslims or Rasta City, the two rival supergangs. While the government has taken steps against these gangs and even brokered a peace between the splintered sects of Rasta City, Sixx and Seven, Trinidad recognizes the leaders of these gangs as “community leaders”. In exchange for votes for an upcoming election, government elected officials to provide gang leaders with legitimate recognition and give them contracts for public works projects. An approach based on the view that gang leaders provide safety and security to residents which, in institutionalizing them, might be a way for the government to enact closer control.
Appeasement of the Gangs
This approach of legitimization could be considered a bona fide strategy in the Prime Minister’s government to work with the entrenched gangs, yet it is the product of years of corruption within the Trinidadian government that has influenced this approach. However there has been an evident push as recently as last year by the Prime Minister to reengage with the Whistleblower Bill (2022) which would “combat corruption by encouraging and facilitating disclosures of improper conduct,” as he diagnosed the widespread corruption in Trinidad. On the floor of the House of Representatives last June, the Prime Minister did not mince words when accusing the opposition, the United National Congress, of not supporting the bill because, “to just take a position you are not going to support it, is telling me you are supporting something else.”
international Interference
Another reason that Trinidad and Tobago’s crime rates are spiralling out of control is the influx of illicit weapons and drugs that come in from nations like the United States, Venezuela and China in which criminals utilize a two-way route. Trinidad’s strategic position along the cocaine corridor supports the illicit drug trade coming from Colombia, Venezuela and French Guiana and being shipped to the United States, Canada and Europe. According to Organized Crime Index, most illicit weapons that enter Trinidad and Tobago are sourced from the United States and in some cases used as a form of payment to barter for illicit drugs along the same routes. As supergangs have risen to the status of powerful but loose mafia-style organizations, the illicit small weapons and munitions have fueled their expansion and the challenge to sovereignty that the state of emergency is now looking to hastily address.
Boosting resources for national customs and border patrol agents might be an ill-fated solution as the illicit trade of small arms and drugs is innately an international problem requiring a solution that derives the cooperation of regional actors. At the last CARICOM IMPACS meeting, National Security Advisor for Trinidad and Tobago, Fitzgerald Hinds, highlighted the high numbers of gun-related crimes in the region pointing to Trinidad’s position as a hub for illicit commerce and foreign guns entering the country and exacerbating the situation. The CARICOM Crime Gun Intelligence Unit, a unit highly involved in addressing illicit trafficking, is an agency responsible for information sharing between U.S. law enforcement agencies and Caribbean ones to disrupt criminal networks and ultimately prosecute offenders. Yet, while the United States has been diligent in providing police aid and training as well as information-sharing to Trinidadian officers through the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI), the help seems too little, too late.
The Dilemma of Governance
To reinvoke some of the points made by critics of the characterization of the current situation in Trinidad and Tobago, many of the government’s solutions fail to recognize the roots of the problem. Just as the gangs are mostly concentrated in the urban capital of Port of Spain, they most easily take root in areas of poverty where education and job opportunities are minuscule. This allows the gangs to sustain a recruitment process where youth and families looking for safety, security and stability where the state fails to provide it, look to gangs for support. This can be traced back to the nation’s implementation of austerity that eliminated social programs that many in poverty utilized. As Prime Minister Keith Rowley took over the government in 2016, he announced austerity measures due to plummeting oil prices and severe overspending by the government when controlled by the United National Congress. While mismanagement definitely existed within the previous government, the lack of diversification of Trinidad’s economy faced similar issues in the 1980s when oil prices plummeted sending government revenues into turmoil causing a similar national conversation. While diversifying the economy might have stemmed the consequences that dependence on fossil fuel revenues might have, the Prime Minister has been a prime advocate for the reliance on dependence of this type of revenue stating, “There is simply no way that other sectors of the economy can realistically be expected to compensate for the loss of export earnings from oil and gas.”
Trinidad and Tobago’s rising homicide numbers are caused by a host of factors including the suspension of bail for criminals, the crippling socioeconomic environment caused by past governments, and the illicit trafficking of drugs and weapons. Officials may blame Trinidad’s geography, lacking resources or misguided past for the precarious situation that the Republic finds itself in now however, the nation must find the capability to restore security, work with international and regional partners and reestablish trust in the government to move forward and stop the violence.
