Re­cent news­pa­per head­lines re­flect­ing a wor­ry­ing spate of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty across the coun­try have re­in­forced the need for a well-co­or­di­nat­ed and sus­tain­able na­tion­al an­ti-crime strat­e­gy.

While suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have spo­ken about se­cu­ri­ty re­form and have re­lied on emer­gency mea­sures to con­tain vi­o­lence when it es­ca­lates, the use of states of emer­gency - un­der both the last PNM gov­ern­ment and the present UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion - has de­liv­ered on­ly tem­po­rary sup­pres­sion of vi­o­lent ac­tiv­i­ty in af­fect­ed ar­eas.

What is re­quired now to re­lieve the pop­u­la­tion of its cur­rent anx­i­ety is a clear­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed, com­pre­hen­sive an­ti-crime plan, with a pub­licly out­lined struc­ture, even if op­er­a­tional de­tails are kept con­fi­den­tial.

As the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion ap­proach­es its first an­niver­sary in of­fice on April 28, with cel­e­bra­tions planned for this com­ing Sat­ur­day, now is an op­por­tune time to ac­count to a weary pop­u­la­tion.

No one is ask­ing the Gov­ern­ment to dis­close tac­ti­cal polic­ing strate­gies or in­tel­li­gence meth­ods.

The need now is for a frame­work that shows how the var­i­ous arms of the State are meant to func­tion to­geth­er over time to re­duce vi­o­lent crime in a sus­tained way.

There is his­tor­i­cal prece­dent for struc­tured think­ing in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, even if out­comes have been un­even.

Un­der for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, mar­itime se­cu­ri­ty re­ceived sig­nif­i­cant at­ten­tion, in­clud­ing the off­shore pa­trol ves­sel pro­gramme, in­tend­ed to strength­en sur­veil­lance of ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters and in­ter­dict nar­cotics traf­fick­ing routes.

That ini­tia­tive formed part of a broad­er ef­fort to build lay­ered se­cu­ri­ty ca­pa­bil­i­ties across land and sea do­mains, in­clud­ing radar sys­tems, air as­sets and spe­cialised units.

The weak­ness, as with many such ini­tia­tives, lay in con­ti­nu­ity.

Since then, there has been no com­pa­ra­ble long-term frame­work with con­sis­tent pub­lic ar­tic­u­la­tion - not from the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment that suc­ceed­ed the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion, nor from the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment un­der Dr Kei­th Row­ley that demit­ted of­fice last year af­ter 10 years in pow­er.

In­stead, the coun­try has large­ly ex­pe­ri­enced a cy­cle of re­ac­tive poli­cies, new task forces, tem­po­rary op­er­a­tions, leg­isla­tive ad­just­ments and pe­ri­od­ic emer­gency de­c­la­ra­tions.

Each may have val­ue in iso­la­tion, but to­geth­er they do not form a co­her­ent na­tion­al doc­trine - a gap that must be ad­dressed.

The cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion, in its man­i­festo, com­mit­ted to strength­en­ing in­tel­li­gence-led polic­ing, im­prov­ing bor­der se­cu­ri­ty, ex­pand­ing com­mu­ni­ty-based crime pre­ven­tion and en­hanc­ing re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and rein­te­gra­tion sys­tems.

One year in­to of­fice, the pub­lic is en­ti­tled to an ac­count of how these pil­lars are be­ing in­te­grat­ed, what in­sti­tu­tion­al mech­a­nisms are co­or­di­nat­ing them and what mea­sur­able out­comes are be­ing tar­get­ed over time.

If the coun­try is to move be­yond its present cy­cle of cri­sis man­age­ment, it must put more fo­cus on sys­tem-build­ing, with co­or­di­na­tion across min­istries, se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies and so­cial ser­vices, an­chored in a sin­gle na­tion­al frame­work with de­fined ob­jec­tives and time­lines.

Above all, sol­id mea­sures to help re­store pub­lic con­fi­dence and to sig­nal to in­vestors that the Gov­ern­ment has a sus­tain­able strat­e­gy for fix­ing this prob­lem.

To achieve that, the Gov­ern­ment must ex­plain, in clear terms, what it is build­ing.

Ap­proach­ing the first an­niver­sary un­der a shad­ow of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, de­spite an SoE in place, makes that ex­pla­na­tion more vi­tal now than be­fore.