Compass Point | Crime: Going inside the criminal mind

The stories told by the incarcerated can be shocking.  

“One time [my dad] beat me so bad that the skin had come off my leg. I was in hospital for two or so months. They beat me so much that sometimes I used to get headaches for hours. I was small…I could not defend myself. Now I am older, somebody do me something, I retaliate.”  

“I got raised with the mother and sister of a man I thought was my father. At six weeks old, my mother handed me over to the family of the man she thought was my father. It was only when I left prison the last time that I realised that he was not my father. The day before my 22nd birthday, I found out who my real father was and I didn’t need him then.”  

“…my bad temper, I know it comes from the pain I feel. I had hated [my mother] for sending me away. I could not take it out on her, so I took it out on other people. Me and a girl would be going good and from the time I see her talking with my mother, I don’t want nothing more to do with her.” (This particular inmate was sentenced to two years for cutting the throat of a girl who rejected his advances. He was 16 at the time.)  

The above comments come from a lengthy study based on a series of interviews done with male Northward Prison inmates in 2006 by Barbadian criminologist Yolanda Forde. The inmates’ names are kept confidential, but the study has served as a significant advisory and reference point for the creation of Cayman Islands public policy regarding what to do with the criminal population.  

The study gave a good profile of what could be considered Cayman’s “average incarcerated offender”, according to Ms Forde.  

“It can be extrapolated from the data that the average incarcerated offender is one who: 

“Two years prior to imprisonment, has not been involved in any wholesome, structured, group-based activity and has spent his spare time aimlessly using and/or selling drugs.  

“[He} attended church as a child and might have even attended Friday night youth group meetings but often engaged in delinquency and offending behaviour despite such involvement.  

“[The inmate] performed poorly at school and was in the lower and middle sets if he attended middle school, [and] in some cases, had learning deficiencies, which went largely untreated in the public school system. In many cases [64 per cent], was suspended or expelled – more often than not for fighting and/or using drugs. 

“[He] had parents who did not support the school teachers and officials in their efforts to address issues involving their child – whether educational or behavioural – and generally came from home environments which were lassiez-faire and out of sync with the culture of learning. 

“[The average incarcerated offender] is a born Caymanian who is incarcerated for multiple offences, but the most predominant of which are crimes of gain – drug importation, burglary, and is not that young – over 25 years of age.  

“[He] is a persistent offender…began his criminal career early in life…in 53 per cent of the cases was in lock-up as a child. [He] does not believe that enough is being done at Northward/Eagle House in terms of rehabilitating him. If he is paroled [he is] insufficiently supported and supervised and…if discharged at his earliest date of release, does not possess the personal skills required for independent, responsible adult living in the wider society.  

“[He] uses drugs, usually marijuana, but a 43 per cent chance of cocaine use at times [and] uses drugs in prison, whether or not he has tested positive during urine checks. 

“[He] grew up in a dysfunctional household characterised by negative practices and patterns of behaviour, experienced parental separation, abandonment or rejection or child abuse, witnessed domestic violence, or was raised in a household with (a) a heavy drinker; (b) where there was multiple drug use, particularly among brothers; and (c) where other members of the family have been convicted of criminal charges and in many cases have also served prison sentences.”  

Alternate view  

While he doesn’t discount the research performed by Yolanda Forde, Frank McField isn’t sure he buys all of the study’s conclusions.  

In these types of empirical question and answer studies, Dr. Frank said, subjects often tend to give the questioner the answer they believe he or she wants to hear – rather than telling their own very personal story.  

The previous data gathering has also, in Dr. Frank’s view, ignored the formation of a criminal subculture in Cayman – a culture that “has achieved dominance in certain marginalised communities where criminal elements, rather than community or governmental authorities, are viewed as legitimate”.  

“As early as the 1970s, research warned the government of the day of pending social breakdowns simmering in the wake of rapid economic changes accompanied by equally swift demographic shifts which resulted in substantially increased wealth and improved education for a few – and left others a minority in their own homeland,” Dr. Frank told an audience gathered for a two-day seminar at the University College of the Cayman Islands held back in March.  

The marginalised status, combined with misguided government social control policies, created alienation and “a secure base for anti-social behaviour and criminal activities”, Dr. Frank said.  

“This environment seeded a conscious revolt by the very people government policies were meant to contain,” he said, adding that the adoption by some youths of a more urban culture emanating from Jamaica and the US was met with more effort at social control amongst the police, judiciary, schools and prisons.  

“The inability or unwillingness of a morally-centred leadership to understand reasons for this [cultural] adoption and identification with things not Caymanian has led to many of the government social control institutions being identified as foreign, anti-Caymanian and repressive,” he said. “[For example] the police have been used to obstruct and combat the simplest form of entertainment and expression found in what are referred to as ‘sessions’.”  

“The culture of silence, which has been identified by previous studies, is not the result of fear, as has been suggested, but rather a direct act of resistance.  

“The greatest threat to law and order in the Cayman Islands is the result of the unnecessary conflicts between the law enforcement institutions, the judiciary rehabilitative institutions and the marginalised communities.”  

Why commit crime?   

Royal Cayman Islands Police Inspector Anthony White, who holds a doctorate in criminology, has what might be considered an odd view on criminal offenders for a cop.  

Mr. White believes that criminals really aren’t deterred from crime by hefty prison sentences nor by the threat of the death penalty. In fact, Inspector White said research in places like Texas, USA, where capital punishment is used frequently – the commission of murder has actually increased.  

The average criminal does think before they act, Mr. White said, just not in a way the average citizen might.  

“There will always be an exception to the rule, but most people think before they act,” he told a group of business owners at the Ritz-Carlton, Grand Cayman last year.  

Mr. White said there are generally three factors most criminal suspects consider before deciding to commit an offence like burglary or robbery: first is severity of punishment, second is the certainty of getting caught and third is celerity – or the swiftness of punishment to be meted out.  

Criminals rarely waste any time thinking about how long a sentence they will receive or how fast they’ll receive it. Mostly, they’re concerned with getting caught.  

“Believe it or not, [the first two issues] don’t hold much weight with offenders. Offenders are not too much caring about ‘how much time am I going to get in prison?’” Mr. White said. “If an offender…has a heightened fear of being caught right then and there, that serves more as a deterrent than the severity of the punishment or the swiftness of the punishment.”  

Criminologists don’t agree in all cases about why crime occurs, or why certain individuals decide to become criminals whether their research focuses on Cayman or elsewhere.  

“We cannot definitely say that this one single factor causes crime,” Mr. White said. “Crime is far more complicated than that.”  

It’s a complexity that Dr. Frank said Cayman Islands society has generally failed to recognise over the past two or three decades.  

“The Cayman Islands [has] travelled many years away from the days when there were but a few disenfranchised youth, to today when those few youths are the grandfathers and grand uncles of the now significant numbers who we are concerned with because they threaten the Cayman Islands brand of peace and tranquillity,” Dr. Frank said.  

A new way  

What Cayman needs, Dr. Frank argues, is a way to empower the disenfranchised, particularly youths in society.  

Officials with the Ministry of Community Affairs are now working on a way to do that, and the answer, they said, might be found in Missouri, USA.  

Mark Steward of the Missouri Youth Services Institute said his state realised its juvenile corrections system was utterly failing about 40 years ago. Juvenile offenders went into what was essentially a prison for young people and came out hardened criminals who – in most cases – committed crimes again. St. Louis, Missouri, became a crime capital of the United States, with more murders per capita than any other large US city during several years.  

“Missouri was plagued by so many problems in the past that back in the 1970s and 80s judges stopped sending kids to the state system because it was so horrible,” Mr. Steward said.  

It was time to make a change, and over the next 30 years a new model of juvenile corrections emerged; one Mr. Steward describes as more “kid friendly”.  

The look of the facilities and the programmes used by the state to hold offenders younger than 17 slowly changed. Over the next few decades in a gradual process, the state moved away from a prison-type environment for young offenders. Today, recreational rooms at facilities like the Montgomery Youth Centre look more like college dorms than prison cells. Very few kids are kept in a cell-like confinement at all, and almost never in solitary lock up.  

Groups of juvenile offenders stick together. They are typically kept not more than two hours away from home while in the juvenile facility and family members are frequently invited to the centre to participate in rehabilitative sessions.  

The Missouri Model places juvenile offenders in appropriate age groups based on the seriousness of their offences. There are three care levels – low, moderate and secure – based on the risk level of the offender, which is based on a risk assessment. Daily activities are planned “from the time they get up to the time they go to bed”, Mr. Steward said.  

He said some view the Missouri approach as soft, “molly-coddling” youth offenders, he calls it. But in reality, he said, it’s quite a bit tougher on both the youths themselves, as well as the facilities teachers’ and staff.  

“Every kid in our system will tell you, it’s a lot easier…to do nothing and then you get out in a specified period of time,” Steward says. “In this programme, you participate. You have to get in there and deal with your issues. You have to show performance, you have to show improvement or you don’t get out.  

“Some kids will try to fake it and get out, but that doesn’t happen in this programme. It’s a comprehensive approach of the staff and the kids working together to really fix that kid; change not just the behaviours that got him into trouble, but change the way he thinks.”  

The rehabilitation process depends just as much on the other kids involved in the programme, he said. They learn by talking to each other in a moderated environment, always with a staff member, but speaking with each other on a regular basis.  

“These kids will listen to each other much more than they’ll ever listen to us anyway,” said Missouri programme director Pili Robinson.  

Cayman rehab  

This rough outline of the Missouri model of juvenile corrections is what the Cayman Islands intends to use in its new juvenile rehabilitation facility. Ministry of Community Affairs Chief Officer Dorine Whittaker said government officials have spent the last year studying it and other corrections models in the US and the UK.  

“We didn’t want to build another prison based on what we’ve seen in research, what can happen to young people,” Ms Whittaker said. “This facility is for people under 17, it’s not for hardcore criminals.”  

Ms Whittaker said Cayman will also begin on a more comprehensive approach to juvenile corrections, involving the Education Department, the prison system and various ministries in a combined approach.  

“We are spending money right now…and if it was working it wouldn’t be in the state its in right now,” she said. “We don’t expect to be warehousing our kids in any form or fashion, and we don’t want kids to get stigma from attending there. We are going to keep as many kids in school as we possibly can. But in terms of where do we pay….we’re already paying, is it working is what we need to ask ourselves.” 

Right now, Cayman is being forced to send overflows of adult male prisoners to the Eagle House juvenile facility. Although the older and younger prisoners are still kept in separate cells, a certain amount of intermingling at the facility is unavoidable, government officials have said.  

Ms Whittaker is hopeful work on the new juvenile corrections facility will start in July.  

“It is going to be a facility that we build in cottages instead of a multi-purpose, big prison with all the guards and all the staff,“ she said. “That was one thing that the group were concerned about, if you build a big building, like a prison building, and you need to step down there’s no step down.”  

By “step down”, Ms Whittaker means a mid-way treatment facility that’s somewhere between a school and a prison lock up. She says not all juvenile offenders are best benefited by being kept in a prison-like environment. 

In fact, most aren’t, according to Missouri corrections officials.  

Mr. Steward said it doesn’t make any sense.  

“Why are you wasting your money having 50 to 90 per cent of kids come back to prison after they’re released when in Missouri it’s less than 10 per cent? A lot of people are afraid to make change…it’s real easy to run a juvenile prison, because you really don’t have to necessarily do much. You have to contain them, put them in a classroom and lock them in a cell, that’s pretty easy to do.”