Criminologist says UK report on T&T gangs credible

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

A re­cent Unit­ed King­dom Home Of­fice re­port es­ti­mat­ing that 186 gangs with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,750 mem­bers are op­er­at­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go has reignit­ed dis­cus­sion about the coun­try’s crime sit­u­a­tion. How­ev­er, ex­perts are say­ing the doc­u­ment should be viewed with­in its in­tend­ed con­text.

The June 2026 re­port, ti­tled Coun­try Pol­i­cy and In­for­ma­tion Note (CPIN): Gangs and Or­gan­ised Crime in Trinidad and To­ba­go, stat­ed that gangs were linked to 43.7 per cent of mur­ders in 2024 and about one-third of mur­ders in 2025. It al­so iden­ti­fied ma­jor gang group­ings, in­clud­ing Mus­lims and Ras­ta City, as key play­ers in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, while high­light­ing the growth of splin­ter gangs and in­de­pen­dent crim­i­nal net­works.

How­ev­er, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad said yes­ter­day that the re­port was not in­tend­ed to serve as an in­dict­ment of T&T or as a trav­el ad­vi­so­ry.

“The pur­pose of that re­port was not to dis­sem­i­nate in­for­ma­tion in terms of the gang sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try,” Seep­er­sad ex­plained.

“If read­ers look very care­ful­ly at the re­port, they would re­alise that it cites the sources of the in­for­ma­tion, and the in­for­ma­tion that’s in the re­port on gangs is well-known and well-doc­u­ment­ed.”

He said the doc­u­ment was pre­pared pri­mar­i­ly to guide UK im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials in as­sess­ing asy­lum claims from T&T na­tion­als who cite gang vi­o­lence as the ba­sis for seek­ing pro­tec­tion abroad.

Ac­cord­ing to Seep­er­sad, UK au­thor­i­ties had seen an in­crease in asy­lum ap­pli­ca­tions from T&T and sought to es­tab­lish a more trans­par­ent and stan­dard­ised frame­work for eval­u­at­ing such claims.

“What the Home Of­fice and the UK gov­ern­ment are try­ing to do is out­line very clear­ly what the cri­te­ria are,” he said.

“There has to be a cred­i­ble threat and ev­i­dence of it, whether that is med­ical records, po­lice re­ports or oth­er sup­port­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion.”

Seep­er­sad al­so de­fend­ed the ac­cu­ra­cy of the fig­ures cit­ed in the re­port, not­ing that many of the sta­tis­tics were drawn di­rect­ly from es­tab­lished in­tel­li­gence and re­search sources.

“The sources are cred­i­ble sources and the in­for­ma­tion is cred­i­ble and ac­cu­rate,” he said.

“The num­ber of gangs and gang mem­bers quot­ed in that re­port comes di­rect­ly from an SSA (Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency) re­port. Those same fig­ures were al­so cit­ed in re­search I con­duct­ed for the US gov­ern­ment on gangs in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

While the re­port out­lined the scale of gang ac­tiv­i­ty, so­cial ac­tivist and for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion mem­ber Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin ar­gued that gangs rep­re­sent on­ly one lay­er of a broad­er crim­i­nal ecosys­tem dri­ven by nar­cotics traf­fick­ing and cor­rup­tion.

Dot­tin de­scribed what he termed a “mafi­at­ic pyra­mid” op­er­at­ing with­in the il­lic­it drug trade, with ma­jor traf­fick­ers at the top con­trol­ling the im­por­ta­tion of nar­cotics and weapons.

“Once you bring in drugs, you will bring in weapons to pro­tect the drug trade. Be­cause of the high prof­its be­ing made, there is con­stant com­pe­ti­tion and con­flict,” Dot­tin said.

He sug­gest­ed that or­gan­ised crim­i­nal net­works of­ten ex­tend be­yond street-lev­el gang mem­bers and may in­volve cor­rupt ac­tors who fa­cil­i­tate or pro­tect il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties.

Dot­tin al­so point­ed to dis­putes over prof­its, ter­ri­to­ry and lead­er­ship as ma­jor con­trib­u­tors to the emer­gence of splin­ter gangs, a trend high­light­ed in the UK re­port.

“Some­times the gangs split be­cause there is dis­agree­ment over prof­its. Some­times younger mem­bers be­lieve they de­serve a larg­er share or feel they can run their own or­gan­i­sa­tion,” he said.

He warned that the pro­lif­er­a­tion of gang lead­ers com­pet­ing over in­creas­ing­ly lim­it­ed ter­ri­to­ry con­tributes to height­ened vi­o­lence.

“Once you have the turf shrink­ing but the num­ber of gang lead­ers and drug deal­ers ex­pand­ing, you’re go­ing to have ex­ces­sive vi­o­lence,” Dot­tin said.

The pas­tor main­tained that gangs con­tin­ue to play a sig­nif­i­cant role in the coun­try’s homi­cide rate, large­ly be­cause of their ac­cess to firearms and in­volve­ment in the drug trade.

“I be­lieve that the gangs are dri­ving a large seg­ment of the mur­ders in this coun­try. Gang lead­ers have the mon­ey to ob­tain guns and drugs, and that fu­els the vi­o­lence.”

The UK re­port not­ed that gangs in T&T are in­volved in a range of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing drug and firearms traf­fick­ing, con­tract killings, kid­nap­pings, ex­tor­tion, hu­man traf­fick­ing, armed rob­bery, il­le­gal quar­ry­ing and fraud. It fur­ther re­port­ed that 57 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion was ex­posed to gang vi­o­lence be­tween Jan­u­ary and Sep­tem­ber 2024, un­der­scor­ing the far-reach­ing im­pact of or­gan­ised crime on com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try.