Policing Trinidad and Tobago: Residents’ Perceptions of High Crime Communities and Officers’ Crime Control Function

• In Event: International Policing Research

Abstract

The turn of the 21st century in Trinidad and Tobago was marked by a surge in crime (Johnson, King, Katz, Fox, & Goulette, 2008; Maguire, King, Johnson, & Katz, 2010). Between 1999 and 2008, the murder rate increased by 485 percent (Maguire & Katz, 2008). By 2012, the murder rate was 37.9 per 100,000, down from its record high of 42 per 100,000 in 2008 (Nicolas, 2009; United States Department of State, 2013). Ethnographic data and semi-structured interviews with 40 community members from a high crime, low-income community, were employed to document residents’ perception of the police and their communities. Results reveal that most citizens perceived police officers as untrustworthy, inattentive, and occasionally corrupt. The divide between the police and the community was perceived as being mutually destructive. Policy implications from this research will be discussed.

Author

• Ericka Briana Adams, North Central College