Today it is a fact that even some of the smaller and more remote communities in the region have experienced some spillover effects of escalating crime rates.
As some observers have noted, much of this escalation has occurred since the late 1980's and is a direct result of the large volume of drugs transiting the region and the increasing number of guns finding their way into most states.
With relatively high rates of unemployment and underemployment, increasing income inequality, and the progressive marginalization of males who fail to meet proscribed standards of education, it is small wonder that a predatory class of young men has emerged.
In practically every instance, these young predators are aided and abetted by an equally feral gaggle of females.
Here we would venture that it is these groups that are disproportionately responsible for the increases in violent and property related offenses and that has driven fear into the hearts of the citizenry.
For our part, we today take note not only of the fact that this nation’s security and integrity continue to be undermined by a gaggle of home-grown gangsters, but that this country of ours is today in the throes of a major crime surge.
Making the matter worse is the fact that there are so very many Bahamians for whom this way of life is seen to be the norm; this being so because these young Bahamians have not ever known any other kind of social existence.
For far too many of them, the law of the jungle is taken to be the way that things are supposed to be. This might explain how it now comes to be that there is such a strident call for this or that law to be amended so as to make it easier for the State to sanction and somehow sanctify capital punishment.
The truth today is surely to the effect that regardless of the existence of this or that draconian penalty, drastic penalty is never really any panacea for ills that are – canker-like – deeply embedded in a deeply corrupted social order.
Here we take note of the fact that the causes and therefore social roots of this phenomenon just happen to be fairly well-known. As the record would show, the causes and progress of the country's social breakdown have been fully documented over the past 20-odd years by a series of special reports.
They were produced by the 1984 commission of inquiry into drug smuggling and the task force on drug abuse, the 1994 task force on education and the consultative committee on youth development, and the 1998 national crime commission.
What did that last report conclude? Well, the commissioners (a judge, a psychiatrist, a criminologist, social workers and clergymen) warned that Bahamian society was threatened by "a pervasive culture of dishonesty, greed and a casual disregard for social norms and regulation."
Four years earlier, the education task force had pointed to a "deterioration of traditional values and accepted standards of behavior", which had produced "the scourge of teenage pregnancy and substance abuse." And previous reports had detailed the rise of lawlessness caused by narcotics trafficking.
As for The 1994 national youth report – chaired by Anglican prelate Drexel Gomez along with other clergymen, police officers and youth leaders, we find that it was said that indiscipline, materialism and low self-esteem among young Bahamians had the potential to cause a social "catastrophe".
The Gomez report, as it came to be known, listed high population densities in Nassau, too many bars and liquor stores, squalid neighborhoods, limited recreational opportunities, education failures and the fact that single girls were having too many babies as among the chief factors shaping the behavior of our young people.
And thus there came to be a consensus to the effect that, these factors – among a plethora of others – had contributed to a rise in domestic violence, a decline in social responsibility and work ethic, a lack of national pride, more lifestyle diseases like alcoholism, AIDS and obesity, and rising levels of criminality.
Sadly, and as if these reports were all for naught, other investigations have been commissioned.
Evidently, none of these will ever amount to much in a time and in a place where so few people actually value human life.
Regrettably, it is this sad state of affairs that happens to be both cause and result of neglect and social decay.
In the meantime, the worship of things continues.
If we are not careful, a whole generation of Bahamians now runs the clear risk of being swept away in this dreadful whirlwind.
