As Nations Move To Stiffen Gun Laws, Jamaica’s Self-righteous Judges Release Gangsters On Probation.……

The Jamaican Government has bone-head­ed­ly refused to see that the (crim­i­nal-cen­tered, rather than a vic­tim-cen­tered) crime strat­e­gy it has pur­sued con­tributes to its run­away mur­der rate.
Both Political par­ties have pur­sued poli­cies that have aid­ed crim­i­nals.
Yet, they con­tin­ue to deceive the Jamaican peo­ple with band-aid strate­gies aimed only at their own self-inter­est rather than the nation’s inter­est.
Jamaica’s vio­lent crime rate will not be reme­died with states of emer­gen­cies, Zones of spe­cial oper­a­tions, or any oth­er band-aid fix­es.
Since the nation declared a mora­to­ri­um on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the pos­ture must be impris­on­ment for extreme­ly long stretch­es for vio­lent offend­ers and offend­ers caught with an ille­gal weapon.
The laws employed in Jamaica are aid­ing crim­i­nal­i­ty. The mur­der­ers are win­ning, while the Government blows smoke up the nation’s ass.

Jamaica has been no stranger to shock­ing­ly light sen­tences hand­ed down by judges who have no respect for vic­tims’ rights. In most cas­es, the sen­tence hand­ed down is an insult to the vic­tims, as the offend­er seems to enjoy greater respect from the judi­cia­ry than the crime vic­tims and their fam­i­lies.
Over the last three decades, as the coun­try declared a mora­to­ri­um on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to please its colo­nial mas­ters, crime has tak­en a decid­ed­ly north­ward tra­jec­to­ry.
Despite unequiv­o­cal evi­dence that remov­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment from the table has embold­ened the Island’s crim­i­nals, unelect­ed lib­er­al judges con­tin­ue to thwart the will of the peo­ple and allow dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals to walk with mere slaps on the wrist.
The Island-Nation has always had a roman­tic ide­al­ism when it comes to the per­cep­tion of the sup­pos­ed­ly inde­pen­dent judi­cia­ry.
Hardly any Jamaican will believe you if you tell them that there are cor­rupt judges.
Understandably, it shocks their sen­si­bil­i­ties and dis­rupts the last ves­tiges of hon­esty and safe­ty they have cre­at­ed for them­selves in their own heads about peo­ple with pow­er.
This naïveté suits the tri­al lawyers, clients, and the media prac­ti­tion­ers who heap prais­es on the judges for return­ing the mur­der­ers to the streets as soon as the police arrest them. In the mean­time, gun crimes con­tin­ue to increase even as the bod­ies of the secu­ri­ty forces con­tin­ue to be used in long stretch­es, as they are asked to main­tain States of Emergencies and Zones of Special Operations in myr­i­ad places across the Island.
In announc­ing his lat­est State Of Emergency, Prime Minister Andrew Holness told the coun­try, there are enough police and sol­diers to main­tain the lat­est dec­la­ra­tions.
Speaking to a cou­ple of sol­diers, they told me dif­fer­ent­ly. One mem­ber told me that he and his col­leagues were forced to sleep in their vehi­cle after doing their shifts, as there was nowhere else.
No prepa­ra­tion was made for their accommodation.

WONDERING WHY THERE ARE SO MANY GUN CRIMES?

A 19-year-old car­pen­ter was sen­tenced to three years pro­ba­tion on each count for ille­gal pos­ses­sion of firearms and ammu­ni­tion.
I won­der what he used the gun and ammu­ni­tion for?

A 19-old was sen­tenced to a fine of $400,000 or two years in prison for ille­gal pos­ses­sion of a firearm and three years pro­ba­tion for ille­gal pos­ses­sion of ammu­ni­tion.

A 43-year-old was con­vict­ed of rob­bery with aggra­va­tion. He was sen­tenced to 18 months at hard labor, each for ille­gal firearm pos­ses­sion and rob­bery with aggravation.

In the mean­time, New Zealand’s gov­ern­ment plans to cre­ate a reg­istry of all guns in the coun­try and stiff­en penal­ties on ille­gal gun sales and mod­i­fi­ca­tions. The move comes six months after a gun­man killed 51 peo­ple at mosques in Christchurch. “Owning a firearm is a priv­i­lege, not a right,” New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Friday, adding, “That means we need to do all we can to ensure that only hon­est, law-abid­ing cit­i­zens can obtain firearms licens­es and use firearms.”

New Zealand’s homi­cide rate in 2014 was (1) per 100,000, as opposed to Jamaica’s (47) to every 100,000 peo­ple. Between 2007 – 2016 there were 686 peo­ple killed by homi­cide (i.e., mur­der and manslaugh­ter offens­es) In New Zealand.
That is 686 peo­ple killed in a coun­try of rough­ly five mil­lion peo­ple over a (9) nine-year peri­od.
Conversely, a coun­try of 2.7 mil­lion peo­ple, Jamaica records rough­ly 1600 homi­cides in a sin­gle year.
See infor­ma­tion on World’s homi­cide rates here.
https://​data​.world​bank​.org/​i​n​d​i​c​a​t​o​r​/​V​C​.​I​H​R​.​P​S​R​C​.P5
Jamaica is in the com­pa­ny of El Salvador at 83 and Honduras at 57 per 100,000, respectively.

Why Jamaica’s polit­i­cal lead­er­ship has refused to deal deci­sive­ly with the issue of crime and vio­lence remains some­what of a mys­tery to many, to the major­i­ty of us who served in the Jamaica Constabulary Force, not so much.
The polit­i­cal lead­er­ship had scant regard or respect for the police depart­ment, and for good rea­son.
The major­i­ty of the senior mem­bers of the force were not lead­ers in the true sense of the word. They were polit­i­cal lack­eys, pro­mot­ed not on mer­it but the basis of their sub­servience.
Data and pol­i­cy posi­tions come from the (UWI), the University of the West Indies, the nation’s pre­em­i­nent insti­tu­tion of high­er learn­ing. A cesspool where left­ist anti-police dog­ma is in no short sup­ply.
Policies are arrived at from the pon­tif­i­cat­ing self-aggran­diz­ing idiots who give text­book ideas that are not test­ed in prac­ti­cal sit­u­a­tions and are gen­er­al­ly unsuit­ed for Jamaica’s unique sit­u­a­tion.
It would make sense that since they do not respect the police enough to hear from them, they would ask an inde­pen­dent police offi­cial from a first-world coun­try to come in and assist them with polic­ing poli­cies.
Unfortunately for the Nation’s law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, they don’t default to their friends and cohorts from the UWI.

The high­er ech­e­lons of the Constabulary, the Judiciary, the legal fra­ter­ni­ty, the media, and every oth­er stra­tum of civ­il soci­ety are now packed with lead­ers from the UWI.
Yes, that same left­ist caul­dron of failed social­ist ide­ol­o­gy. So there is no diver­si­ty of thought. PNP and JLP have dif­fer­ing ideas on how to fleece the nation’s trea­sury and retain pow­er. Nevertheless, when it comes to for­mu­lat­ing pub­lic pol­i­cy, they are all prod­ucts of the very same dirty pool.
Once upon a time, I would write about their refusal to con­sid­er the police’s per­spec­tive when bills are being debat­ed.
Not that expert input is con­sid­ered when vir­gin leg­is­la­tion is being debat­ed in this coun­try.
There is no need to con­sid­er the police when they debate new leg­is­la­tion today. The police hier­ar­chy is no more decou­pled from the left­ist ide­ol­o­gy today than it was two or three decades ago. The police force is now a top-heavy park­ing lot for PhDs. and oth­er aca­d­e­m­ic types, all from the same dirty pool.

In 2018 the Jamaican Judiciary cre­at­ed its own mouth­piece, the Court Management Service (CMS), after senior inves­ti­ga­tors of the JCF draft­ed a doc­u­ment which revealed that judges in St James, Westmoreland, Hanover, and Trelawny are opt­ing more for fines, sus­pend­ed sen­tences, and pro­ba­tion orders for per­sons con­vict­ed for ille­gal pos­ses­sion of firearm and ammu­ni­tion.
Of course, the sanc­ti­mo­nious hyp­ocrites believe they are above being crit­i­cized, and God for­bid that the crit­i­cism should come from the low­ly police.
So they issued their own state­ment, quite unusu­al because they pre­vi­ous­ly did not both­er to respond to crit­i­cisms; they are above it all.
“The judi­cia­ry has no objec­tion to “appro­pri­ate scruti­ny,” but it should be done in a fair, bal­anced man­ner, and based on full and accu­rate infor­ma­tion.” The Judges said.
If you have to address being scru­ti­nized, you clear­ly abhor being scru­ti­nized; after all, you are mem­bers of the [inde­pen­dent Judiciary right].

But they weren’t done.

“The judi­cia­ry wel­comes and under­stands the pub­lic inter­est in the dis­pen­sa­tion of crim­i­nal jus­tice, espe­cial­ly at a time when there is height­ened sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the high lev­els of some crimes in our coun­try,”
“However, inac­cu­rate, incom­plete, and unver­i­fied infor­ma­tion that unfair­ly gen­er­ates neg­a­tive per­cep­tions of sen­tenc­ing prac­tices brings the judi­cia­ry and our sys­tem of jus­tice into dis­re­pute and cre­ates a sig­nif­i­cant threat to the rule of law and the fab­ric of our democ­ra­cy.“
What pop­py­cock bull­shit!!
The sanc­ti­mo­nious hypocrisy of these crim­i­nal-lov­ing char­la­tans is endan­ger­ing the coun­try, not crit­i­cisms of their dirty deeds.

The sheer arro­gance of this state­ment smacks the elit­ism of the first order.
The trans­par­ent annoy­ance in this [form] response from the Judiciary was an affront to the intel­lect of dis­cern­ing Jamaicans who must know that whether they like it or not, some Judges do accept bribes. That some of the sen­tences being met­ed out reflect that real­i­ty.
Regardless of the smoke, they blow up the nation’s col­lec­tive ass; the issue is not just the wide dis­par­i­ty in the sen­tences; the sen­tences are whol­ly inap­pro­pri­ate.
If judges do not like sen­tenc­ing crim­i­nals to prison, they are free to get off the tax­pay­er’s dole and become defense lawyers.
However, while they remain on the dole, they have a duty and a respon­si­bil­i­ty to fol­low the laws; they do no work for them­selves; they are ser­vants of the Jamaican peo­ple.
As for their sup­posed inde­pen­dence, that went out the door when Justice Bryan Sykes was appoint­ed to act as Chief Justice.
So much for Judicial inde­pen­dence, all of a sud­den, the thin veneer of above-it-all was peeled away, reveal­ing the truth of their lit­tle social club.

The crime sta­tis­tics are not whol­ly the result of light sen­tences, police cor­rup­tion, polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence-incom­pe­tence, or the pop­u­la­tion’s across-the-board pre­dis­po­si­tion to be soft on crim­i­nals; it is a con­flu­ence of all of the above, and then some.
In the same breath, there is no greater group of cheer-lead­ers for the light sen­tences being hand­ed down to mur­der­ers and crim­i­nals arrest­ed with ille­gal weapons and ammu­ni­tion than the crim­i­nal lawyers on the Island.
As offi­cers of the court, the Jamaican bar has become a dis­gust­ing lob­by for crim­i­nals, in a mis­guid­ed mis­un­der­stand­ing of their roles as defend­ers of the inno­cent and uphold­ers of the laws.
At the risk of sound­ing like a bro­ken record, I will con­tin­ue to say the obvi­ous. As Nations across the globe seek to tight­en loop­holes to pre­vent crim­i­nals from under­min­ing their soci­eties, the Island nation of Jamaica con­tin­ues to pla­cate crim­i­nals by giv­ing voice to crim­i­nal rights lob­bies, crim­i­nal defense lawyers and tak­ing into account the feel­ings of crim­i­nals ignor­ing the rights of crime vic­tims.
It is a shock­ing abdi­ca­tion of duty, yet it serves the nar­row polit­i­cal inter­ests of both par­ties and the spe­cial inter­est groups that have made the Island’s mur­der rate their feed­ing tree.

.

.

.

.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.