Minister of National Security, the Hon. Wayne Munroe revealed overall crime is down while debating amendments to the National Crime Intelligence Agency (NCIA) Act in the House Of Assembly last week.

Munroe told Parliamentarians, “when one looks at the recent numbers produced for me by the Royal  Bahamas Police Force, yes murders are up 13%, attempted murders are down 19%, armed robberies are down 26%.  There’s a 13% decrease in offences against the person and overall crime is down 6%.”

The Minister said all of the numbers are still too high especially the level of violence.  “Ninety one was too high.  Nighty five is too high.  And so this fixation people have about it, while that is a metric, you have no way of measuring cause and effect short term.  So what we have done, when we talk about effective change, this amendment today is effective change, as was the Bail Amendment Act, as was the Anti-Gang Act.  So if one wants to look at our record, look at it, all of the laws are online.  You can search it by years of passage.  I stand by our record,” Munroe said.

Also contributing to the debate was Member of Parliament of St. Barnabas, the Hon. Shanendon Cartwright who said the Davis administration has failed in the fight against crime.  “The side opposite constantly talks about not politicizing crime, and I will say again, we have not said that the government has caused and murders.  What we have said is the government has a responsibility to lead.  In the Blueprint For Change, since we left in the break, when we left here there were 74 murders in the Commonwealth of The Bahamas.  Since we’ve returned that number is now 87.”

Munroe also said during his presentation that the way to decrease the number of murders is to decrease the number of murderers.