After four wasteful years of predominately government-sponsored antipathy towards foreign workers, the new administration now wants to put out the welcome mat in a belated realisation that our economy needs talented expatriate professionals and other workers to survive, let alone prosper.

Whether this official epiphany is going to be too late remains to be seen but, at the very least, it is no good just talking about the concept without actually doing something meaningful to help it along.

One problem that has to be faced is that, in the meantime, the Cayman Islands is rapidly becoming a far less safe and secure destination for foreigners to relocate to, even if ways can be found to turn around the global perception that expatriates are not welcome in the first place.

Almost every day there are reports of violent crimes, some committed openly in public places and, yes, everyone is bemoaning this, but the words need to be translated into action by both public and private sectors.

It is no good beefing up law enforcement if no attention is paid to why people are driven to crime in the first place and what can be done to nip it in the bud.

The depressed state of the economy is certainly a factor in the increase in crime and, to rectify this, the government is going to have to find effective ways and means of getting people back to work and money into the economy generally.

Regrettably, the government seems to be far more interested in maintaining its own privileges and size at the expense through increased taxation of those that can least afford it.

In other words, the budgetary actions taken to date are likely to make matters far worse in several respects instead of improving them.

Other places, far larger than the Cayman Islands, have faced essentially the same problem when it comes to increased crime and anti-social behaviour generally, with varying degrees of success.

Some of such success has been achieved through the medium of social marketing – the application of marketing principles that are used to sell products to consumers instead to “sell” ideas, attitudes and behaviours.

Like commercial marketing, the primary focus is on the consumer – on learning what people want and need rather than trying to persuade them to buy what we happen to be selling. Marketing talks to the consumer, not about the product.

Having said that, there still needs to be a “product” that people can buy in to; however, the social marketing “product” is not necessarily a physical offering. A continuum of products exists, ranging from tangible, physical products, to services, practices and finally, more intangible ideas.

In order to have a viable product, people must first perceive that they have a genuine problem, and that the product offering is a good solution for that problem.

Surely, no one would disagree at this moment that we have a genuine and seriously developing crime problem in the Cayman Islands and we should all therefore work together to come up with realistic solutions and “market” them accordingly.

The ultimate objective of social marketing is to influence behaviour, but desired behaviours always have competition that must also be understood and addressed.

If, for example, someone is contemplating turning to a criminal enterprise to escape from a pressing financial situation, society must offer a relatively more attractive competing solution, such as job training and it is this meaningful alternative that is currently absent or, if it is available, needs to be marketed and promoted as such.

In just the same way that peer pressure tends to increase the incidence of anti-social behaviours, so the impact of effective social marketing can often produce a snowball effect as people learn about and choose among behavioural options based on directly observing others in their social circle engage in desirable behaviours and the positive consequences they experience.

In addition, desirable behaviour is reinforced by people who connect with those outside an immediate network and bring positive information or practices back to the immediate network.

The immediate question is will anyone with the power and influence to bring about such a programme ever realise, before it really is too late, that something needs to be done and this could well be one of the ways of accomplishing something meaningful?