State Minister for National Security Senator Keith Bell said Caribbean countries like The Bahamas are forced to deal with a new breed of criminal as “super countries” like the United States and the United Kingdom are notorious for shipping hardened criminals out of their lands and to smaller countries.

Senator Bell appeared as a guest on JCN/Love 97 programme Jones and Co. yesterday and said at last report more than 800 convicted criminals from around the world who claimed to have ties to The Bahamas were deported to the country.

“You have a person who may have been born in The Bahamas, but at their birth they may have been taken to the US, to the UK, someplace and at the age of 40 they commit some breach of the law, possession of drugs, attempted murder or a manslaughter case, the United States and England they deport the person back here after they would have served their time,” he said.

“So here it is now you have all of these persons who are bringing in their ways of committing crime, so you have a new criminal altogether.”

Senator Bell said he believes it should be the case where a person has called a place their home for more than 30 years that, they should be recognised as a citizen of that state.

Instead, the national security state minister said these bigger countries ship the convicts out of their jurisdiction, only giving the receiving government written notice.

Sometimes, he said there is no way to verify if the convict is genuinely a Bahamian.

He added that there is no doubt that these bigger countries are assisting in growing the criminal element in the countries in the Caribbean, presenting a new challenge for law enforcement in the region.

“Part of my job, on the force was to critically analyse statistics and look at the modus operandi of these offences and over the last decade you would have seen a complete shift, not even a paradigm shift, of how people are being executed in this country,” Senator Bell added.

“Look at it, burning, beheading, dismemberment and the like. Every possible way you can execute someone and try to conceal it has been done in this country. And we try to figure out where this new culture is coming from.

He added that the government has been able to make a connection between this new wave of crime and criminal deportees.

Making matters worse, he added is the fact that these new criminals are mixing with local criminals and committing bigger crimes like bank armed robberies, more gruesome murders and, in recent times, executing women.

“I had a case that came to me where someone called me and showed me a cell phone with an individual who came into this country as tourist, staying in one of our hotels and burglarised his house,” he explained.

“This tourist broke into the home and they had a confrontation and the tourist dropped his phone. When the guy looked in the phone there are photos of this young man posing with AK 47s.”

Senator Bell said the country needs to develop a national system of identification for Bahamians.

He said this could be an answer to immigration and criminality.

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