Attorney Jomo Thomas posits that the year 2025 serves as a pivotal moment for all Vincentians to reflect and respond. Thomas, in a recent discourse on BOOM 106.9 FM, was articulating concerns regarding moral decline in St. Vincent.
In an examination of homicide and incarceration rates, Thomas disclosed that 96 individuals are imprisoned on murder charges.
This figure he says conveys a compelling narrative, as it indicates that 96 out of a total of 416 individuals represent roughly 25% of the entire prison population.
”So if 25% of your prisoners are in there for murder and you’re not counting manslaughter, you’re not counting all of the other violent-related crimes. It speaks to the moral decay that I’m talking about”.
Thomas articulated that exacerbating this issue is the reality that, over the past 13 years, there have been approximately 500 homicides.
“So if in all of the years based on the numbers, we have a prison system that has 96 persons or persons who might be there serving a sentence from 1990, 1995. And if in the last 12 or 13 years we have had 500 homicides. That again speaks to another issue. And that issue is that many, many persons who are taking the lives of other people are not being caught.
“It will be interesting to see what the arrest charge and conviction rate are, because if you have 500 persons dying from homicides over the last 14 years, and you only have 96 persons, it may mean that we are taking just those numbers as they are. It may mean that we are picking up, arresting, charging, and convicting less than 10% of all of the persons who commit a homicide in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, which means that there’s a further moral depravity”.
“And once a section of our population comes to conclude that they can do things with impunity, it means that we are in an even worse state. It means that we are on a slippery slope to nowhere. Where it means that things are becoming increasingly bad. And when we look at that kind of moral degradation, when we look at that kind of moral decay, and we put on top of that the kind of mental, economic, and social pressures that people are under. Maybe it’s no small wonder that we don’t even have more mayhem—that we don’t have more decay. We don’t have more decadence in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines”.
Thomas expressed his hope that in 2025, we will collectively contemplate these issues and devise strategies to unite and resolve them.
