Bullet Points For Crime Reduction.…

Prime Minister Andrew Holness at a press con­fer­ence ear­li­er this week announced a raft of ini­tia­tives in rela­tion to the Island’s high mur­der rate.
One of the nar­ra­tives from the talk­ing heads as a result of that press con­fer­ence is that once every­one have jobs mur­der will dissipate.

In order to accept that the­sis, one has by default,accepted that because one is poor he is auto­mat­i­cal­ly reduced to being a murderer.
I have repeat­ed­ly show in this medi­um that that is patent­ly false.
As I have con­clud­ed each time after lay­ing out dis­sent­ing facts , there are many coun­tries across Latin and South America, Africa and Asia which are demon­stra­bly poor­er than Jamaica yet they are not sad­dled with the civ­il war style homi­cide rates of Jamaica.
On that basis alone that the­o­ry is debunked.

That is not to say that some cat­e­go­ry of crimes are not direct­ly attrib­ut­able to bad socio-eco­nom­ic conditions.
It is fair to say that pet­ty thefts to include pre­di­al lar­ce­ny, and even cor­rup­tion in Government Agencies may be laid at the feet of poverty.
I am yet to see a sin­gle bit of evi­dence which proves that bru­tal rapes and mur­ders are actions attrib­ut­able to low­er soci-eco­nom­ic status.

In fact Jamaican law-enforce­ment and Governmental offi­cials , of both par­ties, have repeat­ed­ly said that the vast major­i­ty of homi­cides are being com­mit­ted by peo­ple engaged in the illic­it Lotto-scam, Gangs, and the major­i­ty of the oth­ers are domes­tic homicides.
These are facts not hyper­bole or wild assumptions.

I would hope that the Prime Minister’s ini­tia­tives on Domestic abuse cas­es which result in vio­lence are not con­fused with evi­dence which points to more seri­ous Gang and scam relat­ed homicides.
Now that we have estab­lished fac­tu­al­ly that rapes and mur­ders have noth­ing to do with pover­ty ‚we may begin the process of dis­sect­ing the rape and mur­der sta­tis­tics with a view to see­ing what solu­tions can be applied to those problems.
HORSE BEFORE THE CART… 

The idea that fix­ing the econ­o­my means crime goes away is incred­i­bly ridicu­lous. To begin with , the two com­pet­ing inter­ests are not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive. The econ­o­my can be made whole ‚while crime is appro­pri­ate­ly addressed simultaneously.
However ‚if the Administration is inca­pable of walk­ing and chew­ing gun at the same time , it is impor­tant that they at least real­ize that the econ­o­my can­not be fixed in a state of unde­clared civ­il war.
But that even under the most press­ing eco­nom­ic con­di­tions, crime may, and must, be brought under control.

I have laid out in this medi­um, spe­cif­ic ini­tia­tives which if adopt­ed, tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion the finan­cial lim­i­ta­tions of the Island and the Police Department will see a sig­nif­i­cant drop in crime.
I will once again out­line some of those ini­tia­tives which the JCF are free to copy. I am more than will­ing to assist the agency with specifics were they to ask.

FOR THE POLICE

♦ Begin a more rig­or­ous and com­pre­hen­sive vet­ting of Police recruits.
♦ Train Police using proven mod­els in devel­oped coun­tries which are intel­li­gence based.
♦ Retrain every cop at every lev­el using the mod­el adopted.
♦ Remove the accel­er­at­ed ranks from behind desks, place them on the streets wher­ev­er need­ed out­side those need­ed for inside duties.
♦ Put in place mech­a­nisms at all lev­els of the Department based on estab­lished mea­sur­able stan­dards of account­abil­i­ty and productivity.
♦ Place empha­sis on the Investigative capa­bil­i­ties of the Department .Ie, encour­ag­ing and reward­ing qual­i­fied , moti­vat­ed indi­vid­u­als who want to serve in crim­i­nal investigations.
♦ Develop and main­tain close ties with communities.
♦ Incentivize hard work.
♦ Re-estab­lish Esprit de Corp.
♦ Establish sup­port struc­ture for offi­cers caught up in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem until it has been estab­lished defin­i­tive­ly that offi­cers act­ed out­side the laws.
♦ Place police offi­cers in groups of two’s strate­gi­cal­ly on foot and in cars in all major cities and towns dur­ing daytime.
♦ At nights place police offi­cers strate­gi­cal­ly in loca­tions in cars . Officers do not have to be patrolling at all times. This will cut down on the use of fuel.
♦ Effectively mon­i­tor the Nations high­ways with a view to cut down on crim­i­nal migration.

FOR THE GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION..

♦Repeal the INDECOM Act. Re debate the law tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion the pros and cons of the point of view of all inter­est­ed par­ties. Then re-autho­rize it with addi­tion­al inves­tiga­tive pow­ers to assist the police adding anoth­er com­po­nent of inves­tiga­tive capa­bil­i­ty free from polit­i­cal interference.
♦Provide the police with the resources they need to do their job.
♦ Hands off law-enforcement.
♦ Disassociate each polit­i­cal par­ty from crim­i­nals and crim­i­nal con­duct , Remove even the specter of any such associations.
♦ Prevent guns from flood­ing the Island.
♦ Draft leg­is­la­tion which guar­an­tee truth in sentencing.
♦ Mandatory life Imprisonment for rape and murder .
♦ Remove from the hands of Judges the option to pass sen­tence for cas­es of mur­der, rape, extor­tion and racketeering.
♦ Do not hire any Judges who were for­mer defense lawyers for ten years.
♦ Abolish the pub­lic defend­er’s office . Use resources to update and main­tain the Director of Public Prosecution’s office. The coun­try has a Justice Ministry and an Attorney Generals Department, which must han­dle com­plaints from the public.
♦ Eradicate cor­rup­tion from pub­lic agen­cies through vig­i­lance, and super­vi­sion as well as oth­er meth­ods used in dif­fer­ent coun­tries à la-the U S immi­gra­tion service.
♦ Launch a civics cam­paign to teach stu­dents from grade school through high school National pride and civic mindedness.
♦ Throw out out­dat­ed laws . Re do them with more severe penal­ties for breach­es of the penal code.
♦ Encourage pri­vate sec­tor job growth.
These bul­let points are cer­tain­ly not com­pre­hen­sive by any stretch of the imagination.
However I believe a road-map which includes the whole or any sub­stan­tive part of these bul­let points will begin to show a marked reduc­tion in the lev­els of vio­lent crimes on the Island.

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