Failure of Suppression – Doctor Herbert Gayle Lecture

On Friday night at the Bliss Centre for the Performing Arts, well-known anthropologist Doctor Herbert Gayle delivered a public lecture entitled Failure of Suppression. Breaking down crime and violence into dollars and “sense,” Doctor Gayle spoke of how the system has failed to reduce crime nationally and regionally and looks at ten basics for a successful crime reduction plan. Doctor Gayle has two decades of experience in studying social violence, gangs, mass murders and transnational criminal organization across the Caribbean, Central America, the U.S. and Europe. In his return trip to the Jewel, Doctor Gayle broke down some of the statistics. 

Herbert Gayle

Dr. Herbert Gayle, Anthropologist of Social Violence

“When you are small, you don’t have that luxury at all. In fact, ninety percent of children in Belize have seen a dead body, compared to less than twenty-percent in Mexico, because you’re small. Belize City basically is a delta and everybody has to come here. The other side of violence people seem not to understand is that it is about young men killing young men. But quite often, strategically and accidentally, women get killed. So if you want to find a country that is violent, you look at the proportion of women who get killed. And this gets very oxymoronic, so listen very carefully. In first world countries, out of every hundred persons who are killed, more than a quarter are women. In a violent country, young men are killing young men so quickly with such high velocity that it never exceeds ten percent.”