Bermuda’s murder rate has halved over the past five years but it is too early to say the Island has turned a corner on violent crime among young black men, according to commentators.

There were four murders on the Island in 2015, compared with a peak for the past decade of eight in 2011, and Bermuda’s per capita murder rate of 6.1 is now just below the global average of 6.2.

But former race consultant Rolfe Commissiong and former police commissioner Jonathan Smith told The Royal Gazette that although the gang and gun problems appeared to be improving, there was still much work to be done.

Mr Commissiong said the upsurge in murders five or six years ago was attributable to the major restructuring of Bermuda’s economy in the mid to late 1980s, from tourism to international business.

“Black Bermudian males, who were already somewhat of a marginalised group, became more marginalised, particularly working-class black males,” said the Progressive Labour Party MP.

“Heretofore they could go into construction, the hotel industry, and, in many cases, earn a middle-income standard of living. That began to change.”

He said the altered economic landscape led disenfranchised young black men into crime, particularly gang-related, and although the violence appeared to have now “abated somewhat” it was by no means solved.

Mr Smith, former junior national security minister under the PLP government, said the peak in the 2010-11 period was “directly attributable to the prevailing gang problem”.

“The urge for retribution was rife and deadly,” he said. “Strategies in the form of tough new legislation, advances in DNA collection and analysis, arrests and policing tactics themselves, all saw the decline in firearms incidents start in approximately 2011 and have generally continued a downward trend ever since.

“Much work remains to be done. The murder rate, even in the past three to five years, remains excessive and way beyond historic rates seen in prior decades.”

Mr Smith said there were other “complex and multilayered reasons” for the decline in the number of murders.

“Several prolific priority offenders or killers were imprisoned several years ago or have been shot dead since,” he said. “Potential victims or killers themselves have fled the Island; the number of potential targets has declined simply as the death toll took hold.

“Community-led and public-funded initiatives to ameliorate the effects of gangs and reduce the conveyor belt into the gang lifestyle have had some positive, yet mixed success.”

Mr Commissiong had a similar analysis, attributing the decline mainly to an exodus of young black males to Britain and the successful conviction of many perpetrators.

But he cautioned: “It’s very rare that a society can incarcerate itself out of the problem. Until you deal with the underlying factors that are driving it, you won’t [solve it].”

He said the verdict was still out on whether the decline would continue. “It’s too early to say we have turned a corner,” he said. “It’s too early to say that represents a permanent trend. You may have found that between 1998 and 2014 there may have been a number of years where it appeared to be abated.

“You may find other periods within the respective years where there were three or four and then it exploded again.”

He said the underlying social factors that led young black men into gangs, as detailed in the 2009 Mincy Report, still needed to be dealt with and the focus should be on educational reform and more resources for workforce development.

“This phenomena largely has been ring-fenced around Bermuda’s black community,” added Mr Commissiong. “That of itself points to us having to have a larger conversation about that and target our remedies within that respective community.”

Mr Smith, now an author, said the Bermuda Police Service had the right investigative focus and resources were directed where they needed to be: on the gangs and the criminality associated with specific elements within those gangs.

“That focus has been there for 15 years and has intensified in almost every year since,” he said.

He added: “Are we there yet? No. Much work remains to be done.

“This might very well take a generation to uncoil.”

Five years ago, when gun and gang crime were at their peak, The Royal Gazette reported that Bermuda’s per capita murder rate had skyrocketed to almost double the global average, which was then 6.9.

The Island’s rate is now 6.1, based on an estimated population of 65,000, and compares to the 6.2 worldwide average given in the UN’s 2013 Global Study on Homicide.

All four of last year’s murders remain unsolved, with the families of victims Job-Solomon Tucker, 23; Johnathan Darrell, 27; Rickai Swan, 26; and Dejion Stange-Simmons, 26, still waiting for justice.

Bermuda Police Service declined to comment on the statistics this week other than to confirm that there were four murders last year.