How Do We Fix Jamaica’s Run Away Crime?

One of the ques­tions we hear these days is “how does Jamaica fix it’s crime problem ?
Of course many Jamaicans have vary­ing ideas on how to arrive at a place where crime is at a tol­er­a­ble lev­el. At the same time oth­ers will argue that any lev­el of crime is intol­er­a­ble. Pragmatically speak­ing I am of the opin­ion that as a mod­ern soci­ety we will have to grap­ple with a cer­tain degree of crim­i­nal behav­ior be it blue or white col­lar , or both.

What is obvi­ous from many Jamaicans par­tic­u­lar­ly those liv­ing abroad who are no longer sub­ject­ed to the dai­ly killings around the cor­ner or next door, is their lev­el of frus­tra­tion at what appears to be the Government’s inabil­i­ty to do some­thing about the prob­lem. Many demand an end to the killings and oth­er acts of crim­i­nal­i­ty though they have no idea how that goal is to be achieved.
Many are call­ing for a return to the days of the death penal­ty. Of course those emo­tion­al calls does not take into con­sid­er­a­tion the social and legal hur­dles which pre­vents Jamaica a small depen­dent state from using the death penal­ty as a puni­tive tool.

One thing is cer­tain how­ev­er, is that Jamaica’s over five decades of sup­port and roman­ti­ciz­ing of crime and crim­i­nals and the sub­se­quent result the coun­try is expe­ri­enc­ing now will not change overnight.
We absolute­ly need relief from the blood-let­ting. But we need to be clear-eyed that .
(1) Wishing away the prob­lem is not a solution.
(2) Asking for Divine Intervention (though laud­able) will not fix the prob­lem> God help those who help themselves.
(3) Applying quick-fix­es and dra­con­ian mea­sures does not fix the prob­lem , it rather exac­er­bates them.
So what are some of the solu­tions I would offer in order to start the process of rolling back this out of con­trol crime you ask ?
Here is where I believe the Nation must start.

(1) A Government that is itself not a crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tion.
(2) A Government that drafts and pass­es seri­ous anti-crime laws.
(3) A revamp­ing of the failed crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.
(4) Judges who respect the laws.
(5) Truth in sen­tenc­ing.
(6) Create eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties.
(7) Training and equip­ping the CIB branch of the police depart­ment.
(8) Repealing, re-word­ing, and reau­tho­riz­ing the INDECOM Act.
(9) Creation of a mind­set con­ducive to respect for the rule of law.
(10) Strong sup­port for Police Officers.
(11) Most impor­tant­ly chang­ing our coun­try to one where all are equal under the laws. Politicians and the well con­nect­ed can­not be above the Nation’s Laws.

This is a road map which will see a grad­ual south­ward trend in crime. Failing which crime will con­tin­ue to trend upward and blood will con­tin­ue to run unabated.

• This will require (1) a dif­fer­ent mind­set from that which exists in the Political Directorate. Or (2) Using the bal­lot box sim­ply send the present Government/​Party to Political Oblivion and keep it there.
  ♦ Whomever forms the next Administration must then embark on a sys­tem­at­ic and strate­gic path aimed at root­ing out crime.
  ♦That must begin with a total and unequiv­o­cal denounce­ment of crim­i­nals and crim­i­nal-gangs by the new admin­is­tra­tion, mak­ing it abun­dant­ly clear that no act of crim­i­nal­i­ty will be tol­er­at­ed or shield­ed by the Government.
  ♦That means remov­ing the sanc­tu­ary of pro­tec­tion Jamaica’s crim­i­nals are accus­tomed to from Politicians.
  ♦Then begin the process of effect­ing change.
  This process will be extreme­ly dif­fi­cult due to the decades of law­less­ness which has char­ac­ter­ized Jamaica’s last four decades .…
  Some observers have argued that the process of return­ing Jamaica to peace and sta­bil­i­ty would require that pow­er be tak­en from the peo­ple and placed into the hands of a Dictator who would begin the process of elim­i­nat­ing crime from the coun­try then return the pow­er to the peo­ple after a decade
  I can­not sup­port any such plan even though I under­stand the path I out­lined would be dif­fi­cult due to the law­less­ness and indis­ci­pline of the Jamaican masses.
  The alter­na­tive would be to move swift­ly to remove polit­i­cal hacks from posi­tions of pow­er through­out the pub­lic sec­tor and tak­ing con­trol of the mes­sage from day one, explain­ing to the broad cross sec­tion of the peo­ple in the rur­al areas just how the plans being put in place will improve their lives in the long run.
  Even then the posi­tion of the new Administration would be ten­u­ous, Jamaicans are addict­ed to the sweet noth­ing­ness of the cot­ton-can­dy pol­i­tics of the present Administration from Independence.
  Weaning them off the dis­as­trous effects of those poli­cies onto the long term pos­i­tive effects of veg­gies and juice will be a chal­lenge Jamaicans are inca­pable of assimilating.
  But it’s worth a try.