As the region seeks solutions to crime, one Caribbean leader is calling on artistes to examine the music they put out.
Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said we cannot have Caribbean music denigrating women and promoting guns.
“This has nothing to do with curtailing anybody’s freedom of speech it has to do with the mirror image. At the end of the day if we are looking into the mirror and only seeing women as an object then that is how people are going to treat them in our societies,” Mottley said.
Mottley said the fight against crime cannot just lie with governments and has to include artistes, sportsmen and the youth.
Mottley made the comments while speaking on a panel discussion on Monday at the Regional Symposium: Violence as a Public Health Issue – The CARICOM Challenge in Trinidad.
She called for more cooperation among CARICOM leaders in the fight against crime.
Mottley called for collective efforts to address issues such as people getting bail for murder.
Mottley said that was unheard of in her day as a criminal attorney and revealed that a lot of murders in the region are being committed by people with multiple murder charges.
“If you can get people to court within nine to 12 months you have a good chance of a person not being given bail, after 12 months any number could play so why are we spending money separately and individually in forensic labs?”
“Why aren’t we doing and pooling training because most police services in this region do not have enough forensic people to satisfy their own conditions and we need to be able to pull it together,” she added.
Mottley also stressed the need for proactive prosecutions rather than reactive prosecutions.
Stating that security was the only pillar added in the last 20 years to the revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, Mottley said they have not followed through on the functional day-to-day cooperation that could make a difference.
She also called for the rotation of judges and magistrates to ensure there is no familiarity with counsel as well as a CARICOM arrest warrant which would enable countries to bypass extradition issues.