We have to take another close look at crime, its incidence and what it means for all of us. Things will only get worse as more and more people come to the realization that crime pays — and so as crime pays, some among us will continue to hurt other people, rip them off and sometimes kill them.

Sadder still, there is today every indication that the so-called ‘criminal’ and his cohorts are winning and that – we the silent majority – are losing.

For the moment, we might look at things in a new light; with that new way of seeing linked to what we know of all human beings; which is to say – with Aristotle- men are social animals.

As this eminent philosopher notes, “…Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god… ”

Some men act as if they were beasts while a smaller crew adamantly clings to the view that they can and should live like gods.

In each direction we find madness.

Some examples might suffice.

When something big goes down and finally makes the news, the attentive public has a tendency to focus on the individual who completed the deed. They do so because this is how this information is packaged.

We suspect that this way of dealing with crime brings with it a down-side.

This deficit having to do with how things are in the real world – and as to how – human beings are social animals and as to how – whatever they do can and should be linked to the human person’s inherent sociality.

When for example a braying mob of men and women encourage some on or the other to hurt another person, they too are part of the crime being committed; or for that matter, when a wife decides that she would turn a blind eye to her husband’s thievery, she too becomes an integral part of the process that led to the theft.

Indeed, this principle can and should be applied when those who are charged with ferreting out crime and wrongdoing are up and doing their jobs in a manner designed to produce real results.

Put simply, we must – as a people – begin to focus not only on the individual who effectuated or perfected the crime, but also on the social milieu and human affiliations nurturing wrong-doing.

And clearly, as night follows day, come Monday morning of practically any week in memory, we can expect new information concerning the men and women who would have made the news.

This Monday morning was no exception.

We read about the woman who was allegedly maimed and killed by a man who was said to have once been an intimate partner of the man with the cutlass.

We also read about the men who thought they could relieve guards of money that was owned by someone who runs a Web-Shop.

Sadly, one of these men was shot in the face.

Sadder still, it is said that, he now stands publicly revealed as a ‘bad-apple’ police officer.
As the news report affirms, “…A high-speed car-chase and a gunfight ended when a police officer was shot in the face after it is alleged that he and three other men attempted to rob a web-shop…”

We are told that the incident took place around 11am Sunday at Island Luck on Cow Pen Road off Faith Avenue.
In another very sad case of what sounds like love morphing into jealousy-tinged hate we learn that, “…A 22-year-old woman became the country’s latest murder victim after she was stabbed to death in the early hours of Saturday morning.

The woman and a man were at a residence on South Beach Drive off Bougainvillea Avenue shortly after 4am when another man kicked down the front door and forced his way inside.

The intruder then stabbed both victims about their bodies before fleeing on foot… the woman was stabbed several times in her chest and the man, twice in one of his arms.

The woman was declared dead on the scene.

Evidently, news of this ilk will continue so long as we refuse to dig deeper, find crime’s tap-root and thereafter eradicate it.