THE STATE OF EMERGENCY DECLARATION AS A CRIME-FIGHTING TOOL IS A TOTAL FAILURE.

 

This past week, the Government of Jamaica failed in its bid to have the State of Emergency (SoE) declared a few weeks earlier by Prime Minister Andrew Holness for seven police divisions in the island, extended for an additional three months. This failure was the result of non-support by the Opposition Peoples National Party (PNP) members of the Senate who voted against the measure. Their decision drew derision from Senate Majority leader Tom Tavares Finson among other Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) members who openly questioned the loyalty to the country of those who opposed the measure, causing its defeat. No attempt has been made to assess the arguments, or the facts associated with the use of this measure and its overall impact on the country, generally, or its impact on crime specifically. 

I grew up in Jamaica in the period of the 1970s when the then Michael Manley administration introduced legislation in 1974 which created the draconian Suppression of Crimes Act of 1974. This measure introduced “hard-policing” measures including detentions, cordons and searches, and just a general disregard for the targeted population-youths (particularly Jamaican males in inner-city communities) aged 16-25. It led to the passage of the Gun-Court Act in the same year which dished out indefinite detention sentences after speedy trials (within 7 days of an arrest) for illegal possession of firearms and or ammunition. That the British Privy Council eventually declared the Gun Court unconstitutional, seems lost on a majority of Jamaicans, and any lesson value from attempting to use short-term fixes to address the island’s crime problems over the years becomes completely lost on most.

Jamaica suffers from a kind of socio-political miasma whenever opportunities arise to address hard issues, in particular the crime issue. It highlights the “two Jamaica’s” syndrome completely as at one end resides the poor and downtrodden who bear the brunt of the brutality dished out by the State in executing these Emergency declarations. Those who reside in gated communities or have their communities electronically surveilled and or patrolled by armed security officers are oblivious to the damage caused to sections of our population by virtue of the lack of, or under-investment in developing these communities. These critics are conveniently blind to the long-termed effect of the neglect of infrastructure, cutbacks in education resources, and the general lack of investment in supporting economic activities within too many of our communities. Worse, they are numb to the fact that a child who did not benefit from solid foundational educational grounding at the elementary and primary level, will most likely become a misfit in the secondary stage and not just a failure afterward, but a member of the unattached youth throng and a prime candidate for antisocial behaviors later on.

In a Gleaner newspaper interview published November 16, 2018, Ms. Alethea Fuller, head of the Policy and Commissioning Division for the Police and crime commissioner in West Midlands advised that “ hard security measures will have little impact on crime and violence if the authorities fail to address the needs of vulnerable teenagers, who are the primary gang recruitment pool in almost all jurisdictions.” Fuller went on to state that, “The voice of the youths is critical in any security strategy implemented by the Government. I don't think we can do this work without the community. We cannot go into a community and do work without them being involved. They are not going to want to know. They have got to come up with the solution."

Well-to-do Jamaicans seem to think that creating crack police squads and abrogating the rights of its more vulnerable citizens is the way to defeat the crime monster. I have lived through this for four decades and such a strategy has proven to be an abject failure. The fact is we have been doing this since 1976 and all we have to show for it is an increasing murder spiral and a society now completely divided between the better and the worse-class.  

According to a 2017 World Bank report, crime costs the country approximately five percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) every year and this translates to over Ja.$68 billion. These numbers are by themselves significant. More significant though is the loss of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as a result of spiraling crime. How do you encourage people with capital to venture from their much safer shores to a place like Jamaica with a murder rate of nearly 50 murders per 100,000 of the population? How does one measure potential Return On Investment  (ROI) against the high chance of being one of the nearly 1,400 murder victims each year for the last 20-25 years?

I do not envy Prime Minister Holness (whose prediction on the campaign trail of 2015) has come back to haunt him insidiously. The fact though, is that he is now in charge and the crime monster will neither be wished away nor solved by the continuous declarations of States of Emergencies. It is time to make hard long-termed decisions to address crime in Jamaica. It is time that Andrew Holness as Prime Minister, provides the leadership necessary by bringing all Jamaicans to the discussion table to hammer out solutions that will be to the benefit of all of Jamaica, however long that will take.

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