Garrisons Strategic Impediment To National Growth.…..

If you are a fol­low­er of events in Jamaica, you could eas­i­ly walk away believ­ing that the Police is the begin­ning and the rea­son for Jamaica’s crime dilem­ma.
What we have how­ev­er is a soci­ety schooled on anar­chy and an unhealthy dis­re­gard and dis­re­spect for the rule of law and a polit­i­cal lead­er­ship exempt from the arms of the law.
Subsequently, there is now an across the board atti­tude that peo­ple should be able to do as they please with­out con­se­quence.
The aver­age life expectan­cy of Jamaicans is some­where in the Mid-sev­en­ties. It fol­lows, there­fore, that for the most part, lit­er­al­ly every Jamaican alive today grew up lis­ten­ing to (AM-band) Radio Jamaica, and JBC Radio, which was dom­i­nat­ed with day­time talk shows.
As you may have guessed the favorite top­ic has been about bad roads, no water or elec­tric­i­ty, pol­i­tics, and police.
(citation)Worldlifeexpectancy.com reports that accord­ing to the lat­est World Health Organization (WHO) data pub­lished in 2018 life expectan­cy in Jamaica is: Male 73.6, female 78.5 and total life expectan­cy is 76.0 which gives Jamaica a World Life Expectancy rank­ing of 59. 

This fac­tu­al analy­sis is in no way an attempt at [cop­splain­ing], the Jamaican police have cer­tain­ly done more than enough to cause at least some of the dis­re­spect they have got­ten over the years. Even so, it is impor­tant to under­stand con­tex­tu­al­ly, how the force arrived at where it is today.
I will not lit­i­gate that here today suf­fic­ing to say that where there is right­eous gov­er­nance agen­cies of gov­ern­ment tend to fol­low suit in giv­ing qual­i­ty ser­vice to the peo­ple.
Where there is cor­rupt gov­er­nance across par­ty lines as it obtains in Jamaica, and there is sys­temic effort to scape­goat a cer­tain branch of Government, as the police have been, then it is only nat­ur­al that the results are what they are.
Jamaicans decry the high mur­der rate yet they shield mur­der­ers and protest when they are arrest­ed or killed.
They talk about the sav­agery being played out on young girls, but they encour­age the drug and alco­hol crazed zom­bies who destroy these chil­dren.
They say they want the laws enforced but get in the way when the police try to enforce the very same laws.
They say they want cor­rup­tion gone, but they go to great lengths to explain away and ratio­nal­ize theft com­mit­ted by their polit­i­cal par­ty mem­bers. We can either have a coun­try of laws in which every­one is pro­tect­ed, and sub­ject to the laws, or we can pay lip ser­vice to the rule of law, while being cheer-lead­ers for the crim­i­nal underworld.

And so as Jamaicans bemoan the mas­sive loss of life at the hands of mind­less drug and alco­hol crazed killers, I pro­pose a new course.
(1) Write a new Constitution and throw out the old one. Let us pledge our com­mit­ment to Jamaica land we love, instead of to an old white woman who rep­re­sents every­thing wrong which was egre­gious­ly done to us.
(2) Replace our old archa­ic sys­tem with a new Republican-Democratic sys­tem, with a tit­u­lar President and a chief exec­u­tive as our Prime Minister. (See Trinidad and Tobago).
(3) Upgrade the penal code to reflect the seri­ous­ness of the times.
(3‑a) Bring back the death penal­ty, death by fir­ing squad.
(3‑b) If a per­son is caught with an ille­gal gun it is impris­on­ment with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.
(3‑c) If a per­son is caught with a firearm which was used in a vio­lent crime, a‑la mur­der the penal­ty is death. Persons who are not in pos­ses­sion of ille­gal guns or are engaged in crimes involv­ing firearms should have noth­ing to wor­ry about, right?
(4) Increase expo­nen­tial­ly, the penal­ty for Rapes and oth­er sex­u­al assaults.
(5) Increase expo­nen­tial­ly the penal­ty for pub­lic offi­cials who engage in offi­cial mis­con­duct while in office. (That includes every­one from the Prime Minister on down to the low­est rung of the pub­lic payroll).

If we are seri­ous about clean­ing up our coun­try we can­not be queasy about the penal­ties we cod­i­fy into law to deal with those who break our laws.
In soci­eties in which crime is reduced to a bare min­i­mum, every cit­i­zen has a chance to live their dreams and enjoy their lives as they see fit.
Crime is one of the great­est imped­i­ments to per­son­al and col­lec­tive growth. Jamaica, is no excep­tion to that rule, and so, despite the sup­posed work eth­ic of our peo­ple, the coun­try can only eke out a mar­gin­al best case growth rate of 1.30 %.
According to tradinge​co​nom​ics​.com, Jamaica has one of the slow­est grow­ing economies in the Caribbean. Services, with tourism employ­ing 10 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion, is the most impor­tant sec­tor of the econ­o­my and accounts for around 60 per­cent of GDP. 

The nation’s lead­ers on both sides of the polit­i­cal divide talk a good game about increas­ing the gross domes­tic prod­uct.
What they refuse to acknowl­edge is that their love and sup­port for law­less­ness has made it impos­si­ble for the coun­try to see any mean­ing­ful growth.
The con­tin­u­a­tion and per­pet­u­a­tion of the gar­ri­son cul­ture which keeps the res­i­dents of these com­mu­ni­ties impov­er­ished and there­by depen­dent and behold­en to crime fig­ures, are some of the great­est threats to the sol­ven­cy and legit­i­ma­cy of the Jamaican state.
At the same time, the Garrisonization of the Island is not some­thing on the wane. politi­cians in both major polit­i­cal par­ties see the gar­ri­son cul­ture as strate­gic to gain­ing and con­tin­ued hold on state pow­er.
Consequently, the chances of any mean­ing­ful change in the way of dis­man­tling the gar­risons, and free­ing the cit­i­zens from the ten­ta­cles of the so-called area lead­ers o/​c “Dons”, remains a dis­tant dream for think­ing Jamaicans.