A man’s shooting death in broad daylight at Chapman Lane, The City, on Tuesday, has reignited national concern about the rising tide of violent crime and the slow pace of justice reform, even as a new minister – a top criminal law barrister – takes charge of the system under mounting public pressure.
The slaying of Shamar Corey Alleyne adds to a troubling pattern, with the island recording 50 homicides in 2024, 49 in 2025 and five murders so far this year, intensifying pressure on the authorities to curb violence and address long-standing delays within the courts.
In an interview with Barbados TODAY, political scientist and pollster Peter Wickham argued that while law enforcement has shown strength in apprehending suspects, systemic failures within the justice system continue to undermine crime-fighting efforts.
“I mean there’s an argument that it takes too long in Barbados and across the Caribbean to lock up someone and to try the person,” Wickham said.
“We have a situation where the police are very good at catching criminals, but we do also have a situation in which you have had criminals in prison and getting bail because they’ve been in prison so long, and then they commit other murders. And both sides, both BLP and DLP agree that that’s not desirable.”
He pointed to chronic inefficiencies within the courts, contending that delays at every stage of the judicial process weaken deterrence and frustrate public confidence.
“I think that the management of the justice system is one that means it has to be more speedy. And then there are many ridiculous things which happen within the justice system a lot of us don’t understand in terms of the speed, let alone the time it takes to deal with the matter,” Wickham said.
Citing overcrowded magistrates’ courts, he added: “When they have call days, two and three hundred people with road traffic offences going before a magistrate to plead individually. All of these things are ridiculous wastes of the judiciary’s time, while you have someone on a murder charge for ten years, and you know, cases going missing, files going missing, and that type of thing.”
Pressed on whether senior criminal defence attorney Michael Lashley, who was on Monday appointed Minister of Legal Affairs and Criminal Justice, could effectively drive reform at the highest levels of government, Wickham drew a parallel with Trinidad and Tobago’s experience under former attorney general Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj.
Maharaj, a senior criminal lawyer, served as attorney general between 1996 and 2001 and controversially signed the death warrants for several former clients, including convicted drug trafficker Dole Chadee.
“The presumption is that the good criminal lawyers know where all the bodies are buried. A bad analogy but frankly, that’s essentially what you’re saying metaphorically in the judicial system,” Wickham said. “And they may be the best persons to get the judicial system working to essentially ensure that those corpses don’t cause the whole system to addle.”
Against that backdrop, he said expectations now rest on Lashley to make a significant impact in the justice system.
“I think that that is what Michael Lashley is there for. To get matters moving, to speed up matters, to ensure that all of these delays are eliminated, and to get a situation where persons are tried, convicted, taken before the courts, and locked up in three months, which is a reasonable time,” Wickham said.
“Right now, we are operating on a far longer time period, and I think that those are the kinds of issues that he’s supposed to deal with. And yeah, pretty much in the same way that Maharaj seemed to have been able to get things moving, the hope is that he will be our Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj.”
The renewed debate on crime and justice reform follows the fatal shooting on Tuesday in Chapman Lane, underscoring the immediacy of public concern. Police reported that around 1:40 p.m., Alleyne was sitting in an area commonly referred to as The Canal along Third Avenue when two individuals approached, flanked him, and fired several shots.
A medical doctor later examined the victim and pronounced him dead at the scene as detectives opened inquiries.
When Barbados TODAY visited Alleyne’s Greenpoint, St Philip home on Wednesday, no one was at home.
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