Collin Greenland, Contributor
TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS in Jamaica, especially the University of the West Indies (UWI), have been frequently criticised for their disinterest, and/or inability to make meaningful contributions towards the myriad of challenges faced by Jamaica. The UWI in particular has borne the brunt of these attacks, and regrettably I cannot claim that some of these harsh criticisms against my alma mater are without merit.
Economic policies and crime fighting, for example, are two areas of national concern that some feel do not benefit enough from our higher institutions of learning. Whereas they can point to some contributions made in the former, most universities/colleges on the island would be hard-pressed to claim meaningful contribution to the latter.
UWI's public relations officer, Carroll Edwards, made recent attempts publicly to dispel these criticisms by pointing to their teaching and researching in criminology courses. Other interventions in criminology also include two previously held biennial Caribbean conferences on crime held at Mona.
These attempts to expound on the UWI's intellectual and practical efforts to fight the monster of crime did not warm the cockles of my Taylor Hall heart. This is so because we should be doing, and can do so much more.
ERROR OF FOCUS
Mrs. Edwards' defence, like so many others from our local centres of learning, betrays an error of focus that is shared not only by academicians, but also regulators, politicians, law enforcement personnel and the public at large.
The error is twofold. First, a disproportionate amount of effort, time, and resources are haphazardly hurled at violent crime, while the abominations of white collar crime attract scant attention. Unlike more enlightened crime fighters in other jurisdictions, we in Jamaica are yet to appreciate fully the inextricable link between both violent and white collar crimes, and how perspicacious attention to the latter may incalculably ameliorate the former.
LIP SERVICE
The second error is the lip service paid to forensic science in crime fighting, both in the violent and white collar spheres. The multiplicity of disciplines crossing the social and natural sciences, currently taught and researched by the UWI, can be further distilled into an elixir of forensic disciplines more clinically concentrated towards crime scene investigation, DNA linkages, and other scientific methodologies that are now commonplace and proliferate in courtrooms internationally.
On the white-collar crime battlefront, the sophisticated techniques utilised by modern-day fraudsters require creative application of forensic computer assisted auditing tools (CAATs) just to keep up, much less to counter their dastardly deeds. The perpetrators of money laundering, economic extortion, identity theft, 'phishing', skimming, spoofing, pretexting, and 'pharming' (just to name a few), cannot be tackled by the programmes mentioned by Ms. Edwards.
One effective way that the UWI or any other dynamic tertiary institution could effectively provide unquestioned clout on crime fighting in general, offer practical leadership against both the violent and white-collar versions, plus giving itself a lucrative 'cash cow', is to establish a forensic college.
For example, some of the esoterically appealing but investigatively innocuous master's degrees mentioned, could be replaced and supplemented by an M.Sc. programme in forensics, with specialties in either white-collar or violent crime. The social sciences faculty could provide foundation courses in psychology, sociology, criminology, etc.
Forensic science students specialising in violent crimes would move on to do courses designed by the natural sciences faculty in a myriad of disciplines which could include calorimetry (temperature, thermomechanics, thermomagnetics, macromolecularity, etc.); mass/volume determination; density/refraction indices; glass properties (density, flotation, etc.); soil properties (topographical analyses, density, distribution, etc.); serology (blood and semen composition, ABO system, heredity, etc.).
Those forensic science students more interested in white-collar crime would do their advanced courses on fraud and forensic accounting, including advanced accounting; internal audit; enterprise risk management; corporate governance; fraud examination (deterrence, prevention, detection, investigation); cyber/computer fraud; legal elements of fraud (eg. law of evidence, chain of custody, asset forfeiture, etc); document examination (infrared electronic converter, electrostatic detection apparatus, projectina, etc.).
SELF-MOTIVATED
Those of us who pursued forensic career paths had to be self-motivated and access professional certifications from diverse foreign associations such as the Institute of Internal Auditors, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, the American College of Forensic Examiners, among others. I can assure not only the UWI, but also the University of Technology, University College of the Caribbean, Northern Caribbean University or any other dynamic institution, searching for an innovative niche, that such a curriculum would not only make a visible national impact, but attract students from all over the globe, and greatly enrich its coffers.
The reality of today's world, however, is that this forensic college will probably only emerge if some private sector entrepreneur, enticed by the lure of profit, establishes this academy.
Collin Greenland is a certified forensic consultant and examiner.
