In Search Of Solutions To Jamaica’s Crippling Crime Problem.…

With crime and lawlessness amok in Jamaica authorities of the four month old Labor party administration are contemplating a raft of issues which they hope will lead to a better system of justice delivery, less overcrowding in the Island’s prisons and a reduction in crime.

Jamaica’s Minister of National Security has no expe­ri­ence in secu­ri­ty , he is not a lawyer and he has nev­er held any law-enforce­ment or secu­ri­ty port­fo­lios to my knowl­edge but he does seem to have a grasp at least of the things which can be done bet­ter with­ing his broad portfolio.
Jamaica’s decrepit non-func­tion­ing jus­tice sys­tem did not hap­pen overnight , nei­ther will it be fixed overnight. Respect for law-enforce­ment and the rule of law must be part of any suc­cess­ful coun­try’s culture.
Disrespect for law-enforce­ment and the rule of law is a humon­gous part of Jamaican cul­ture. When we con­sid­er how the Island decayed to the extent even our Caribbean neigh­bors do not want our nation­als on their shores look no fur­ther than at indi­vid­ual Jamaicans actions and utterances.

Montague has pro­posed a num­ber of pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives which if adopt­ed could change the tra­jec­to­ry of crime. Nevertheless it will require a mon­u­men­tal and par­a­digm shift in the thought process­es of the peo­ple . Sadly I do not see that happening .
The min­is­ter will find his task tan­ta­mount to rolling a bar­rel up a steep hill while oth­ers are push­ing the bar­rel the oth­er way.
Whether it is as he sug­gest (1) arm­ing the cit­i­zen­ry , (2) mak­ing pris­on­ers sen­tenced to hard labor work for their keeps ‚Or (3) allow­ing low risk offend­ers to go home with ankle bracelets ‚or any of his oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions it shows that the min­is­ter is thinking.

Speaking to one media house on the Island Montague said :
“Not all Jamaicans will get it, but they must have a fair oppor­tu­ni­ty to apply for it and the sys­tem must come down on the side of the cit­i­zen. It is born out of a very, very sim­ple con­cept: when a crim­i­nal is break­ing through your win­dow, he must give pause and won­der how many guns are inside that house. Is it one or is it five? What are my chances if I go in and there is five? He must give pause and won­der. Our crim­i­nals have it too easy and decent law-abid­ing cit­i­zens should be giv­en a fair oppor­tu­ni­ty against the crim­i­nal,” .

Some of the Ministers sug­ges­tions are work­able and oth­ers not so much .Even though I believe ordi­nary cit­i­zens should not be at the mer­cy of crim­i­nals, arm­ing the pop­u­la­tion more than they are already armed can­not be the answer. For a small nation Jamaica already has way too many peo­ple affil­i­at­ed with gangs, and oth­er crim­i­nal enti­ties walk­ing around with reg­is­tered firearms.
When you want to put out a fire you don’t pour gaso­line on it.

The Island was allowed to set­tle into the great­est peri­od of rot and deca­dence dur­ing the tenure of Percival James Patterson the man who sin­gle-hand­ed­ly wrecked Jamaica.

Patterson destroyed both the econ­o­my and the police force .He placed detec­tives back in uni­form effec­tive­ly destroy­ing the inves­tiga­tive arm of the force . Patterson allowed crime to grow out of con­trol by not pro­vid­ing mon­ey to train a sin­gle detec­tive for almost a decade. Even if a leader/​s set out to will­ful­ly destroy a coun­try they could hard­ly have been more suc­cess­ful than Patterson has been.
Under Patterson the very nature of the peo­ple changed to any­thing goes , “any ting a any ting “. Patterson’s claim to fame “every man fi dri­ve car an hav nuff gyal”. Such has been the per­mis­sive and encour­ag­ing nature of the Island’s longest serv­ing Prime Minister a colos­sal fail­ure and a blight on the beau­ti­ful nation.

The Island we once knew as Jamaica took a fate­ful down­ward turn under Percival Patterson who should have been impeached and sen­tenced to prison for dere­lic­tion of duty and gross negligence.
Oh that only hap­pen in coun­tries which respect the rule of law.

As if that was not enough Patterson encour­aged a deca­dence and law­less­ness nev­er before seen in Jamaica.
Turning Jamaica around will require a lot of heavy lift­ing , the hard­est lift in my esti­ma­tion is the mind­set of the pop­u­la­tion toward the rule of law. Juxtapose that with the litany of groups who make a liv­ing from crime and the task becomes almost impossible .
Yet I sup­port any­thing which will bring san­i­ty to this cesspool of insanity.