Terror in Turks and Caicos

During my entire childhood, until I went to college, I can count on one hand the number of murders that happened in my home country – it was literally less than one a year most of my childhood.

However, over the past few years, the murder rate had been increasing quickly before a quick pause and has since skyrocketed back up beyond heights I could have imagined. The lives lost have touched many families and households, and the back-to-back murders over the last few weeks and open fire breaking out in entire neighborhoods have left residents scared to leave their homes. To make matters worse, the recent surge in September, tallying 11 for the month, has zero standing arrests so far (2). October is also off to a bloody start with a multi-homicidal armed robbery and a police officer sustaining gun wounds during a movie-style car chase that left bystanders in the community victims of spray bullets too.

According to the Governor’s official Facebook page, a large amount of the new violence is being perpetrated by an international Jamaican gang that has recently increased its presence in TCI. Our porous borders, and archaic paper-based immigration system, with non-existent enforcement driven by bad policy, corruption, and dysfunctional civil services, have resulted in possibly a quarter of the entire country’s population being illegal. Though most illegal immigrants are peaceful people fleeing harsh conditions, we’ve now seen some of the most dangerous gangs in the world infiltrate our borders.

Haitian and local gangs have also contributed to the violence, and recent killings of gang affiliates created a power vacuum that the Jamaican gang is trying to fill (according to the Governor). The shocking September and October violence is the culmination of a deteriorating economy forcing more and more of the country’s young people into gang life. When you pay attention to the country’s economics, you understand how it has deteriorated into chaos, and you’ll have a better chance of reversing the spiral.

Relevant Context

“Research suggests that inequality raises the stakes of fights for status among men. The connection is so strong that, according to the World Bank, a simple measure of inequality predicts about half of the variance in murder rates between American states and between countries around the world. When inequality is high and strips large numbers of men of the usual markers of status – like a good job and the ability to support a family – matters of respect and disrespect loom disproportionately.” (1)

The Turks and Caicos economy is among the most reliant on tourism in the world – a relatively low-paying industry. With a minimum wage of $6.25/hr and a higher cost of groceries than most major cities in America, the recent surge in inflation over the past few years has exasperated an already bad financial situation and made the lowest paid legal income less attractive than street life. The increasingly difficult cost of living crisis has driven people at the low end of the economic spectrum to resort to illegal means to supplement or replace their income. A large chunk of local residents (though the exact amount is uncertain because of opaque data surrounding our economy) must watch foreigners enjoy a lavish paradise by the world’s standards while they struggle to make ends meet. Inflation adds more fuel to this fire by causing the severe income inequality crisis to sting even more.

Solutions

Replacing our archaic immigration system with a decentralized, self-sovereign digital identity system built on blockchain technology that eliminates the possibility of fraudulent immigration documents while allowing agents of the law instant access to the databases results in much smoother enforcement. The security and interoperability of blockchain technology would allow one self-sovereign ID to connect to different government databases while protecting individual privacy. This means, law enforcement would be able to link traffic, legal, and immigration databases, so police could identify a person’s criminal record, and immigration status simply by reading their license plate. The self-sovereign identity system could also help create economic opportunity in several ways:

Making the government more efficient, able to tackle a wider variety of problems by automating mundane tasks and reassigning the manpower to other pressing issues.
Providing a wider range of financial tools available to the local population through the introduction of a credit system, and new fintech products.
More effectively preventing financial discrimination through better ability to track financial data.
Serving as a key piece in a larger government plan to diversify the economy into technology when combined with a comprehensive education, targeted immigration, and business oriented plan grow the sector locally.
Providing the government with better data to allow it to identify and solve problems economic problems in real time.
Making TCI an even more attractive place for foreign investment.

Legalizing marijuana and creating a push to help those already engaged in the trade legalize their businesses and participate in different stages of the industry creates a new source of tax revenue for the government and converts potential criminals into entrepreneurs. Raising the minimum wage and tying it to inflation, diversifying the economy, and introducing a robust public housing program that shows local and at-risk populations a pathway to having a comfortable life would serve as practical economic solutions to reverse the spiral. With such a low success rate at prosecuting crimes, the public must also get answers on why criminals enjoy wild-west-level police enforcement.

Policemen are underpaid, which one could suggest hypothetically leaves them more vulnerable to corruption. Our government has focused on requesting outside assistance and bringing in more police equipment but has not spoken much about police personnel integrity, accountability, and development. Witnesses, family members, friends, and associates are often scared to speak out because of fear of retaliation and the lack of protection for witnesses. There is a deep dissatisfaction and trust between the community and police force, so many crimes remain unsolved, and the cycle reinforces itself.

“There is no income tax, capital gains tax, property tax, inheritance tax, or corporation tax in the Turks and Caicos Islands.” (3) Diversification of the economy will need a large-scale investment in education in whatever sector we want to diversify into, the wages of teachers and policemen need to go up, school facilities need major renovation, we drastically need a trade school, and the government has to find a way to address the housing crisis (my recommendation being to invest in public housing). The government’s strategy should not focus only on enforcement and punishment – we have to address the root causes of the crime (income inequality and the rising cost of living) to ensure the change in the environment that has caused crime to pick up is corrected. The increasing expenses mean we may need to rethink our tax structure to save our country.

Regional Factors

Finally, it’s time for regional governments feeling the brunt of the Haitian refugee crisis to start talking openly and honestly about the history and what’s happened to the country. Governments should use this to call for a Marshall plan for the country that’s been systemically oppressed since its founding in an effort to protect the slave trade and colonial systems of the time and today for elites to leech the country of its resources. Haiti’s history play’s an outsize role in the history of the African diaspora, yet we learn more about King Henry VIII in school than Toussaint Loverture. The Turks and Caicos Islands have received a proportionally large number of refugees, so we should be placing a similarly large effort towards helping our neighbors solve their problem that affects all of us. Until Haiti is in a better place, the refugee crisis won’t be stopped whether or not we have helicopters and boats patrolling the waters, and the refugee crisis will continue adding fuel to the crime fire.