By Eddy Smith
It’s easy to court attention with blood-soaked headlines. A gruesome killing here, a drug bust there, each fresh headline jostling for the public’s outrage and political mileage. In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the conversation around crime often sounds more like campaign banter than nation-building strategy. But while slogans fill the airwaves and blame circles the drain, the actual machinery behind crime, (how it forms, spreads, and mutates) often goes ignored.
Recently, I had the rare pleasure of meeting Dr. Marcelo Sain, a leading thinker on criminal networks and state security in Latin America and the Caribbean. Our exchange didn’t just spark a few ideas; it dragged me, willingly, down a rabbit hole of uncomfortable but necessary questions. Questions about how small states like ours approach crime, about whether our responses are strategic (or simply reactive) and about what it might truly mean to build a coherent state in the face of rising disorder.
Dr. Sain’s central idea is as provocative as it is sobering: organised crime does not fear a present state… it fears a coherent one. In other words, it’s not police visibility or press releases that disrupt criminal power; it’s when the political, judicial, and enforcement arms of the state move in alignment, with clear priorities and unbroken resolve. Sain (A native of Argentina) has seen firsthand how disjointed state responses, political posturing, and selective enforcement feed criminal ecosystems rather than dismantle them.
This hit home for me. In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, we’ve often repeated that “there are no gangs, only associated groupings,” a position I happen to agree with. But that doesn’t mean we’re exempt from the deeper problem Sain describes: networks of local actors, however loosely defined, becoming nodes in a larger criminal web that thrives precisely because our responses remain fragmented.
In a small island state like ours, it’s tempting to think we’re too tightly woven for organized crime to root itself deeply. We know our neighbours, and the idea of cartel-style empires seems almost theatrical against the backdrop of village shops and cricket fields. But that sense of familiarity can be misleading.
St. Vincent may not have gangs in the archetypal sense (no rigid hierarchies or branded territories) but we do have something else: fluid, loosely connected networks of young men, often tied together by shared neighbourhoods, friendships, and a growing appetite for power, status, and survival.
These “associated groupings” might not qualify as organised crime in the traditional sense, but they operate with increasing coordination, drawing strength and resources from transnational gun and drug pipelines. To dismiss them as petty or disorganised is to misunderstand how modern criminal ecosystems evolve, especially when the margins of the state are porous, and the incentives for lawlessness are greater than the rewards for order.
What Sain makes clear, and what resonates with our own experience in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, is that crime does not always flourish because of deliberate neglect, but sometimes because of the natural gaps that emerge when institutions are stretched thin or working in silos.
Our police may act with urgency, but without matching prosecutorial support, crucial cases stall. Our laws may exist on paper, but without timely intelligence, the right targets slip through. And even when there is political will, the reality of limited resources, overlapping mandates, and the pressure of public expectation can make long-term strategy feel out of reach.
In such an environment, criminal actors (especially those aligned with more sophisticated regional networks) exploit those gaps. Not because our institutions are complicit, but because the machinery of enforcement is not always aligned in rhythm or purpose. That’s where the challenge lies: not merely in presence, but in coherence.
If there’s a path forward, it won’t come from trying to replicate large-scale models, but from designing strategies that respect our scale, our limits, and our social fabric. This is where Sain’s emphasis on coherence becomes especially relevant for a country like ours.
We don’t need overwhelming force, we need focused coordination. Intelligence-led policing, where information flows between agencies and informs every operation, is a good place to start. So too is the principle of focused deterrence, not trying to cast a wide net, but applying consistent, credible consequences to the small number of individuals driving the majority of violence.
When paired with social support and community outreach, these strategies have shown real promise in similar environments. The goal isn’t to create a fortress state, but to build one that moves with purpose… where prevention, enforcement, and justice don’t compete for space, but reinforce each other.
Of course, building coherence isn’t solely the job of government. In a society as tightly knit as ours, the strength of any security strategy will also depend on the quality of its partnerships. Faith leaders, educators, social workers, and even business owners are often the first to see when something is going wrong in a community.
Their involvement can’t be symbolic; it has to be structured. From youth mentorship programs to school-based interventions and support for families in crisis, these actors help build the kind of social resilience that makes crime a less attractive path. Sain points out that even the best enforcement models are limited if the communities themselves don’t trust the process or feel invested in the outcomes.
And in our context, where institutions are more accessible and relationships run deep, that trust (and the shared will to protect it) can become our most effective form of deterrence.
What our conversation with thinkers like Sain reveals is not a ready-made blueprint, but a challenge: to think deeper, plan smarter, and act together. We may not face the same scale of organized crime as larger nations, but the fault lines exist, and if ignored, they can widen quickly.
The goal isn’t to mimic Argentina, El Salvador, or even Trinidad. Our path must reflect who we are: a small island state with limited resources, but an unmatched capacity for connection, dialogue, and agility. If we can break away from the habit of reactive enforcement and instead design systems that anticipate, adapt, and include, we stand a chance not just of suppressing violence, but of managing crime in a way that affirms the rule of law, public trust, and national dignity.
In the end, coherence isn’t about perfection; it’s about direction. And perhaps the real question for us is not whether crime can be stopped altogether, but whether we have the courage and clarity to confront it on our own terms, with eyes wide open and hands working together.
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