Despite Criticizing Lisa Hanna, Junior Justice Minister Now Heeding Her Call.…?

Well geez, this is becom­ing quite a thing of late .
Me say­ing once again that I stand with a mem­ber of the People’s National Party!
It seem that the PNP does great from the Opposition bench­es. Maybe the time is right for us to have a type of uni­ty Government from all polit­i­cal sides of the Isle.
It would elim­i­nate much of the par­ti­san ran­cor and poten­tial­ly give small­er polit­i­cal par­ties a voice and a seat at the table.
The Israelis had demon­strat­ed that it can be done. Other nations have done so suc­cess­ful as well.

Anyway I am real­ly talk­ing about PNP mem­ber of Parliament Lisa Hanna’s recent call to the Government to stop the music of Dj Vybes Kartel from pol­lut­ing the pub­lic airwaves.
Miss Hanna’s call drew a cho­rus of protest,condemnation and even death threats from some mem­bers of the cabal of deplorables who sup­port the con­vict­ed murderer.
No sur­prise there , if some­thing is destruc­tive and degen­er­a­tive one can safe­ly bet that there will be mass sup­port for it in our country.

In fair­ness to the incar­cer­at­ed artiste, mur­der music has been around before him. Nevertheless he and oth­ers like him have long exceed­ed the bound­aries of decen­cy on the type of music they create.
The result today is a smoul­der­ing cesspool of lyrics which depict mur­der, may­hem, misog­y­ny, and sado masochis­tic desires parad­ing as music. Artiste know full well that when they push the enve­lope the forces of order pull back allow­ing them to do what they want.

Amid the noise which emanat­ed from Ms Hanna’s call was rev­e­la­tion that the Dj is still record­ing his misog­y­nist, mur­der music, though serv­ing a life sen­tence for murder.
But this was exact­ly what Hanna was opposed to, it was the fact that the degen­er­a­tive lyrics were allowed on the pub­lic airwaves.
The Disc Jockey’s sup­port­ers have adamant­ly argued that these are archived music record­ed before he was imprisoned.
Of course these claims have as much authen­tic­i­ty as the mourn­ers who claim they saw police mur­der gun­men in their bed at 3:00 in the morning.

Whether the artiste is record­ing from inside the prison, or his music is archived is hard­ly the point . Neither can be placed at the feet of Vybes Kartel . I said as much in an arti­cle sev­er­al days ago.
The issue is a con­se­quence of the deep cor­rup­tion with­in the sys­tem which allows (1) filthy lyrics on the pub­lic air­waves and (2) the con­tin­ued cor­rup­tion with­in the prison sys­tem, which by the way is lost on no one.
As I said in a pre­vi­ous Article , it is well known that the Corrections Department has for years been a cesspool of cor­rup­tion and crim­i­nal­i­ty. It has con­tin­ued as an open secret with suc­ces­sive Administrations from both polit­i­cal par­ties refus­ing to lift a fin­ger to do any­thing about it.

Enter the Junior Minister in the Ministry of Justice Pearnel Charles Jr.
Charles came out against Lisa Hanna’s call last week say­ing he is not in agree­ment with the recent sug­ges­tion by Hanna of the whole­sale ban­ning of the intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty of mur­der con­victs. “It’s a very sim­plis­tic view to say you’re con­vict­ed, and you’re mak­ing this impact, so we are going to sen­sor your music. Remember, some­times you may be the cre­ator of the music and may have sold the rights to your music. That is why we have to have a clear and cogent dis­cus­sion on sev­er­al issues: ban­ning somebody’s music because they are con­vict­ed, and ban­ning music that aris­es from unau­tho­rized record­ings (which) wouldn’t be ban­ning. That music is just illegal.”

Despite that non­sense posi­tion, just a week lat­er the very same Pearnel Charles Jr. had this to say to Prison warders.
“I am on a mis­sion and all cor­rec­tion­al offi­cers must hear me very clear­ly. I do not intend to be deterred by any man or woman. The Department of Correctional Services will become the pre­mier exam­ple of effi­cien­cy; it will have to draw up its socks.” 
“You are fore­warned. What is hap­pen­ing and what will hap­pen you can’t stop it. So any­one who feels they need to resign, you can bring the paper to my desk. Anyone who feels that they can­not take the heat, call the super­in­ten­dent and tell them,” 

“That means every­body else get ready. This is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for all per­sons who might have, whether direct­ly or indi­rect­ly, been involved in any activ­i­ty that could be or appear to be cor­rupt or crim­i­nal, you get one chance – desist! That’s it. From hence­forth don’t call any­body and ask for any oth­er chances because we are mov­ing up. “I will not be ever pushed away from my focus. I don’t lose, so we have no choice but to win.” http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​J​u​n​i​o​r​-​m​i​n​i​s​t​e​r​-​t​e​l​l​s​-​c​o​r​r​u​p​t​-​p​r​i​s​o​n​-​w​a​r​d​e​r​s​-​t​o​-​r​e​s​i​g​n​-​o​r​-​f​a​c​e​-​t​h​e​-​h​e​a​t​_​9​1​638

So what’s changed over the space of a sin­gle week which trig­gered this sil­ly bom­bas­tic blather?
Now let me be fair to Pearnel Charles Jr.
He did say that among the things the Government intends to do are changes to leg­is­la­tion and pro­ce­dures to ensure account­abil­i­ty and enforce­ment, and that X‑ray scan­ning machines will be installed at Tower Street and St Catherine adult cor­rec­tion­al cen­ters, as well as the Horizon Adult Remand Center in Kingston.

Metal detec­tors and new entry man­age­ment pro­to­cols, a poly­graph of all recruits and cor­rec­tion­al offi­cers, a re-zon­ing of spaces in all pris­ons, the expan­sion of closed-cir­cuit tele­vi­sion (CCTV) cov­er­age across the sys­tem and the enhance­ment of the use of cel­lu­lar jam­ming tech­nol­o­gy were the oth­er mea­sures announced.

Fine, those are great ideas but how will this be imple­ment­ed in these old decrepit prisons ?
The prob­lem it seem to me is the char­ac­ter of Correctional offi­cers from top to bottom.
If the prob­lems are indeed as many Jamaicans say they are in the Nation’s pris­ons, how will the new tech­nol­o­gy make a dif­fer­ence in the hands of the same cor­rupt people?

We have heard this kind of brava­do before, it was Bruce Golding who made sim­i­lar com­ments and what we got was INDECOM.
It is con­cern­ing to me that the Junior Minister would engage in such blovi­at­ing gib­ber­ish, instead of work­ing dili­gent­ly to mod­ern­ize the Department , by allow­ing the tech­nol­o­gy to help root out the crim­i­nals with­in the system.
And while we are at it where is Terrence Williams in all of this ?
The Corrections depart­ment falls under his remit to investigate.
Where is he?
Maybe he is too busy smear­ing the Police to do his job.

Oh what a dif­fer­ence a week make .
At the time Ms Hanna made the state­ment I said this was a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty for full bipar­ti­san­ship as a show of uni­ty to the coun­try that at least on a mat­ter of prin­ci­ple the polit­i­cal lead­ers can come together.
What Charles did was to dis­agree , then in the space of a sin­gle week, by his own words encap­su­lat­ed lit­er­al­ly every­thing his col­league from the oth­er side intend­ed in the first place.