Crime and violence is a developmental issue which the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) has identified as an important area of focus over the next strategic plan period 2012-2014.  That’s why a panel discussion on Improving Citizen Security in the Region will engage the attention of the Bank’s Governors on Wednesday, May 23, 2012, during their Annual Meeting in the Cayman Islands.

Increasing violent crime in many of CDB’s Borrowing Member Countries (BMCs) represents a significant threat to economic and social development and hampers efforts to reduce poverty and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.  CDB recognises the urgency with which this issue must be addressed if the Region is not to lose the developmental momentum of the past two decades or worse, experience an erosion in the socio-economic gains attained.

The panelists will be Professor Anthony Harriott, Director of the University of West Indies Institute of Criminal Justice and Security and Head of the Department of Government at UWI Mona; Barbadian poet, Adisa ‘AJA’ Andwele; and Prof. Richard R. Bennett, Professor of Justice in the Department of Justice, Law and Society at American University in Washington, DC.

Professor Harriott is the author of several scholarly articles and the author/editor of six books primarily on the issues of violence, and policing in Caribbean societies.  These include Police and Crime Control in Jamaica: Problems of reforming Ex-colonial Constabularies, and Understanding Crime in Jamaica – New Challenges for Public Policy. He was instrumental in the preparation of the Caribbean Human Development Report 2012 – Human Development and the Shift to Better Citizen Security.

AJA’s work addresses a number of global issues, including war and conflict; poverty; the threat to the environment; and the abuse of children and women.  From 2002, he transformed his poetry from the stage and the page into humanitarian projects in Barbados, the Caribbean and Sierra Leone.

In 2003, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) appointed him a Spokesperson for Peace & Poverty Eradication for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, and in 2008, UNWomen honoured him as a Partner for Peace.

Prof. Bennett has taught graduate and undergraduate students for over 30 years at American University and elsewhere.  His areas of expertise are comparative crime and criminal justice. He has conducted research and published over 65 articles in the areas of cross-national correlates of crime and police attitudes, behaviours and procedures including a book, Police at Work.  He is currently researching crime and police issues in post-colonial societies.

He is also the principal investigator of an ongoing antiterrorism programme for visiting foreign police and security officials contracted by the U.S. Department of State.

CDB President, Dr. Warren Smith had promised in his inaugural statement to the Governors last May that, “CDB will work very closely with governments, community-based organisations and other stakeholders to begin to address the infrastructure deficiencies and social interventions needed to engage and transform communities adversely affected by crime and violence.”

This panel discussion on Improving Citizen Security in the Region is one of the 2012 Annual Meeting events which will be streamed live via CDB’s website, www.caribank.org.