Since learning about the crime situation and about what is going on in the Virgin Islands, I’ve come to several conclusions. The most startling for me has been the realisation that, for the most part, the vast majority of Virgin Islanders don’t really care about worsening crime. They show very little concern or outrage over the fact that most of our murders over the last 20 years have gone unsolved, or even the fact that in the last five years violent crime and burglaries have both risen to unprecedented levels.
I’d be willing to wager that each and every one of us in this territory has either been a victim of crime or personally knows at least three people who have been a victim of some kind of crime. Yet public meetings on the issue are attended only by a handful of residents, and crime prevention groups struggle to find committed members. This raises an interesting question: Is the lawlessness of the VI perceived to bring benefits that outweigh the cost?
Bear with me while I explain: Countries with high rule compliance — such as the Scandinavian countries where people basically park where they should, build in ways they’re allowed to and don’t make themselves a nuisance to others — are also very low on corruption. For these countries, abiding by the law goes across the board and is part of their culture. They long ago came to the conclusion that the cost of breaking laws outweighs the benefits.
Other countries have not yet come to that conclusion: In Nigeria, for example, wages for most people are low and most officials expect to be bribed. Driving in Nigeria is reportedly chaotic, and rule compliance is weak. Nigeria also scores very high in studies on corruption as you might expect since lawlessness tends to have a domino effect and is hardly ever confined to just one area. But perhaps lawlessness (and corruption) has a benefit (real or perceived) that is higher than its cost: The bribes that Nigerian officials take supplement their incomes and help them make ends meet.
In the VI
Do people in the VI benefit from the lawlessness that prevails? Perhaps they do. Many landlords, nightclub proprietors, scooter riders, tent vendors, contractors, drivers and so on could be said to benefit from weak legislation and lax law enforcement. Nightclub owners are not required to soundproof their establishments before opening for business, which reduces their cost of business. And the simplest thing for somebody with something to sell is to purchase a tent and occupy a space on Crown land, such as a parking lot where no rent would be involved.
But many regular people also benefit from our weak laws and poor law enforcement. Let’s say I’m walking down the street with my Styrofoam food container. I finish eating and chuck the container in the bush or maybe just drop it on the sidewalk (as many people actually do). There is no consequence or cost to me for doing so. The people around me are doing the same thing. Nobody tells me to pick it up or looks at me with disapproval. I am not issued any fine. In fact, it’s convenient to not have to walk with the empty container, so I will do it again.
Flouting the law
There are examples of people flouting the law in minor and major ways all around us. They are benefitting from doing so and may actually be profiting from their infraction.
Unfortunately, what this means is that we have created a society where lawlessness is now the culture. But we weren’t always like this, or were we? Twenty, 30 and 40 years ago, perpetrators of violent crimes such as murder would turn themselves in or be turned in by their parents or other relatives. Does that happen now? Maybe not so much. Why not? I really don’t know, but I do know that the last few decades have wrought significant changes on the territory.
In the absence of any great governmental or colonial apparatus up to about the 1960s and into the late 1970s, Virgin Islanders developed something of a laissez-faire approach to rule compliance because there weren’t, in fact, many rules, and there was hardly anybody around to enforce them. (During Prohibition, most people got involved in smuggling alcohol to the United States VI and Puerto Rico. And in a territory with hardly any roads and no traffic lights, the traffic law wasn’t very complicated. Road Town was hardly more than a scattering of houses and a few government buildings and, if Styrofoam had been invented, nobody here knew about it.)
Economic growth
Then development happened. With the growth of tourism came high numbers of immigrants and a construction boom. As the population grew, government grew, and by the end of the 1990s we had lots of new laws on the books. The society and the environment around us changed, but the laissez-faire attitude to the law remained and was intensified by the lack of enforcement. For example, laws were passed several years ago against both noise pollution and littering, but though the place is noisier than ever and crammed with litter, not a soul has ever been prosecuted for either offence.
Some among us are fond of pointing out that the VI is still one of the safest territories in the Caribbean and point to the USVI as they make one of those Pharisee-like comparisons that ignores the fact that crime didn’t suddenly drop from the sky onto the USVI: It grew over time. That’s exactly what we are seeing now: a growth in the rate of violent and other crimes that is fed by the culture of general lawlessness that we have allowed to overtake us.
We need a culture shift, but this would require better, stronger laws and better, stronger enforcement — not just of our laws against crime but all our laws. It would also require creative leadership capable of developing imaginative ways to address the growing lawlessness and of involving all sectors of the society in the effort to reclaim the territory. The longer we continue to ignore these issues, the more lawless this territory will get. Eventually, the costs of lawlessness may be greater than we, individually or collectively, can bear.