Annmarie Barnes, Contributor

I write in response to an article published in the In Focus section of The Sunday Gleaner on December 17, in which UWI professor, Bernard Headley, suggested that the recently completed Criminal Deportation Study, of which I am the main author, is flawed. The criticisms levelled at the study team and the funders of the research project are at variance with the facts and distract attention from the substantive elements of the country's first systematic attempt to interrogate the impact of criminal deportation on the society, and to develop a comprehensive policy framework for addressing the increased deportation of Jamaican nationals who have been convicted of crimes in other countries.

The writer's apparent reason for finding the study to be 'flawed' seems to be predicated on two main criticisms.

The first relates to a finding of a direct statistical correlation between increases in deportation and increases in the number of murders. In critiquing this finding, the writer leaps from a finding of correlated variables to a conclusion that deportation has caused murders to increase. The rationale for this conclusion is puzzling, since the distinction between correlation and causation is an elementary one for students of social science, and is explicitly acknowledged on Page 55 of the study: "The results of this co-relational analysis strongly suggest that there is a very strong positive relationship between the number of criminal deportations to Jamaica and increased violent crime rates in Jamaica. Although suggestive, these bivariate analyses cannot be taken as proof of a causal relationship between increased deportations and increases in violent crime, since other factors may have contributed to such an increase."

Correlations speak to a general relationship between deportation and crime. The question of direct causation was explored through an analysis of actual conviction rates, which revealed similar conviction rates for deported persons when compared to the general population. In other words, the rate of conviction for deported persons was one in 18, compared to one in 17 for the general population. Any attempt to use these data on the rates of conviction to estimate a rate of deported persons' actual involvement in criminal activity is entirely misleading, since conviction rates measure only the extent to which crimes detected by the police are then successfully prosecuted, and cannot simply be compared to the number of crimes that are officially reported to the police.

Second critique

The second critique of the study is a methodological one, where the writer dismisses data from a survey of self-reported offending patterns from a sample of 214 deported persons as 'unscientific' because it asks 'convicted deportees' to report on their criminal habits. If I understand correctly the disparaging and sexist analogy to asking married men if they beat their wives, the writer seems to have assumed that the survey involved only deported persons who had subsequently been convicted of crimes in Jamaica, and who were asked to tell us what they had done. Here again, the writer seems to have missed the point.

The survey was in fact, conducted through a convenience sampling of deported individuals who were located in every parish across the island. This method of sampling, while less reliable than a truly randomised sampling technique, is widely accepted in social science research involving populations that are difficult to reach. In keeping with our focus on criminal deportation, we interviewed only persons who had been deported to Jamaica on criminal charges, and they were asked to tell us whether they had engaged in criminal activities in Jamaica subsequent to their deportation. Although only 11 per cent of the sample were persons who had actually been convicted of crimes in Jamaica, more than half (53 per cent) of the respondents reported involvement in criminal activities, many of which have gone undetected by the police.

With respect to the role of Professor Barry Chevannes in the research project, Chevannes was in fact invited to join the team as a senior research associate, and the attribution of that title to him in the report was consistent with the role he performed, and with the written terms of the research proposal.

Professor Chevannes has never been credited as a primary author of the study, and could simply have been listed as an 'adviser' if he had expressed such a preference prior to the actual publication of the report. The writer's suggestion that Professor Chevannes may have been used as a 'cover' imputes harm only to the latter's professional reputation, since clearly, had Professor Chevannes not desired to be associated with the study, his own personal and academic integrity would have restrained him from accepting compensation for such an involvement.

In addition to the distortion of facts related to the criminal deportation study, the author falsely credited me with authorship of a 2001 report prepared by the Research Unit of the former Ministry of National Security and Justice. I was neither associated with the ministry, nor for that matter even resident in Jamaica, when the report was released. And contrary to the writer's claims of deliberate suppression of that earlier report, the record reveals that he and I were both session chairs at the 2001 Caribbean Conference on Crime and Criminal Justice where the findings of that study were publicly reported by ministry staff. An even more curious fact is that the writer seeks to produce research findings on the deportation/crime connection from that study, which was designed as an analysis of the risks/needs of deported persons, and which was based entirely on data collected for a single year, January-December, 2000, from interviews held with persons upon their arrival at Norman Manley Airport.

Manipulation of the language

The writer's unjustified and indefensible accusation that the study was designed primarily to prove that deportation is linked to increased rates of crime in Jamaica, as well as the presumption that the study is innately flawed on the mere basis that it was commissioned by a governmental organisation, seems a rather curious position, coming from a researcher who has himself undertaken 'sponsored' research, and begs a rather troubling question.

Indeed, the writer's critique of what he describes as a "manipulation of the language and semiotics of research science to meet a stated political-ideological objective" may be more appropriately used to interrogate the following excerpt from an article published by said writer in this newspaper on October 15, in which he sought to discredit the study even before it was published.

Here's what he said back then: "My big fear, as a Jamaican living in Jamaica, is that if we keep wrongfully harassing in particular the Americans about them sending back violent criminals, they may indeed decide to start sending us some of the superthugs and mad-dog killers we bred back here, but whom the American prison system has so far kept safely locked away from us. But keep trucking this misguided stuff and the Americans may send back to us Vivian Blake, Colin Ferguson, Lee Boyd Malvo and some of our recent 'extraditables' as well as a few, just a few, of the scar-faced assassins we turned loose on the streets of Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Miami in the 1980s."

This criminal deportation study was designed to inform governmental policy and seeks neither to harass, nor to generate political tensions. In fact, even before this study was published, unofficial meetings were held with representatives from all the major deporting countries to discuss the possibilities for collaboration in implementing the recommendations of the study, which are overwhelmingly directed at responding to the needs of individuals who have been dislocated by deportation.

Effective strategies

Of a total of 41 recommendations developed by the study team, the vast majority focus on the development of more effective strategies to streamline the various stages of the deportation process, and to aid in the reintegration of persons involuntarily returned to Jamaica.

These include specific actions to ensure the proper settlement of individuals' affairs before they are returned to Jamaica, the provision of resources to aid in the process of resettlement, and the implementation of strategies to reduce stigmatisation, blocked opportunities for employment, and other barriers to the successful reintegration of these Jamaican nationals.

The nations involved in this deportation dilemma know only too well that the mass removal of criminal offenders from one locale to another does not simply solve the problem of criminal enterprise, which is transnational in scope. Good sense dictates that deporting and receiving countries find ways to ensure that their collective response to the deportation of criminal offenders will not jeopardise prospects for global security. It is to be expected that the conclusions drawn from research will differ according to the research questions and the methodological design of particular studies, but divergent approaches and outcomes can only add to the body of knowledge in a field where there is a paucity of independent research. Policy-based research is designed to inform knowledge-based policy-making, but good governance is neither a function of mere statistics, nor dependent on the outcome of ideological battles.

The challenge of responding to the security needs of the country, including the realities that flow from the increased deportation of criminal offenders to the region, precludes indulgence in controversial debates that prove to be as counter-productive as they are intellectually puerile.

Annmarie Barnes is a consultant criminologist to the Ministry of National Security.