The crime problem has reached the level where even church leaders are calling for the heads of criminals. When it gets to this point, we know we are in serious trouble.

I do agree that the death penalty must be one of the tools used in the war on crime, but we also need social services to implement programmes that would prevent a person from turning to a life of crime.

Hunger and fear profoundly shape a person's thoughts. When you don't know where the next meal is coming from, you become paranoid, desperate and disillusioned, and then you find yourself in a crisis mode and anything could happen.

hunger cries

When you hear the hunger cries of your children, you are more likely to pull the gun than to fall to your knees in prayer. It is an unbearable sound that only the strongest among us could endure.

The solution is prevention, which consists of job creation, free lunches for all schoolchildren, free health care, free psychiatric care and family counselling, and the list goes on and on. This will definitely cost a lot of money, but we will be able to recoup these costs by growing our economy exponentially in the absence of crime and despair.

Imagine being able to freely run your business without thinking that someone is going to extort or kill you. You would become creative in the goods and services you provide without having to cut corners because of crime. Your profits would increase enormously which would lead to expansion - hiring more people, paying more taxes, increasing wages, etc. in essence building the nation's wealth.

Imagine tourists visiting our beautiful island could go anywhere without fears of being robbed or killed, can you imagine the kind of money that would be flooding into the country. The whole country would become like a tourist village where anyone could set up shop anywhere, because it would not be unusual to be anywhere in the country, even the most distant corners and see a tourists just casually passing by without a care in the world.

the possibilities

Can you image the performance of students no longer paranoid about their next meal, buying books or someone attacking them, in an environment conducive to learning, where they can truly focus on their schoolwork and dream of becoming the next Rhodes Scholar or Nobel Prize recipient?

Can you imagine UWI flooded with foreign students who are shelling out serious bucks per semester for tuition because they want to study in a tropical paradise, free of crime and despair, rather than the blistering cold in Europe or North America? Can you imagine UWI at least doubling the size of its campus to meet these demands, thus enabling it to admit local students free of cost?

These things and many more are possible, but we first must demand that our elected officials put the will of the people before their selfish interest.

I am, etc.,

NORM EDMONSON

bigupja2@hotmail.com