Jamaica’s Government On Crime”#2

Yesterday I spoke to you about the state of Criminal Justice in Jamaica in part one of what I intend to be a two-part series on the sub­ject. This is not the first time that I have spo­ken about Jamaica’s bro­ken and woe­ful­ly inept crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, and it cer­tain­ly will not be the last. As long as the sys­tem is as decrepit as it is, I will con­tin­ue to shine a light on it. I am unre­strained from telling the truth as I am not in the employ of that sys­tem any­more , nei­ther do I intend to be a part of it in the future. One thing is cer­tain, is that one does­n’t need to be inside a fire to know that it is hot, one does not need to be an expert to know that if one jumps off the Flat Bridge he will land in water. We live in a tech­no­log­i­cal age which makes access to infor­ma­tion rather easy. Under free­dom of infor­ma­tion laws gov­ern­ments and agen­cies are not allowed to be Judge and Jury in deter­min­ing whether the pub­lic has access to per­ti­nent infor­ma­tion it needs. The Jamaican Supreme Court for exam­ple has a web­site where all the per­ti­nent infor­ma­tion that may be required by inter­est­ed par­ties are post­ed. Subsequently it is a lit­tle naïve’ for any­one to believe or sug­gest that one has to be immersed with­in the sys­tem in order to under­stand or ful­ly appre­ci­ate what the inner work­ings are. Conversely I dare­say it is rather unique­ly Jamaican that we con­tin­ue to delude our­selves into think­ing that only cer­tain peo­ple who are indeed heav­i­ly invest­ed and or immersed with­in a par­tic­u­lar dis­ci­pline may appro­pri­ate­ly address that par­tic­u­lar dis­ci­pline. What we have found is that mis­con­cep­tion is direct­ly attrib­ut­able to some of the prob­lems that are plagu­ing our coun­try today.

I incor­po­rat­ed the for­gone para­graph in response to my very good friend and for­mer col­league who was real­ly kind to respond to the pre­vi­ous blog. I appre­ci­ate his response and find him cred­i­ble and hero­ic in voic­ing his opin­ion with­out hid­ing behind a moniker even as he still resides in Jamaica.

Carolyn Gomes Director of Jamaicans for Justice.

Yesterday I told you Jamaica’s nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy could be summed up in a sin­gle sen­tence (“spend all you can to pro­tect the most despi­ca­ble mur­der­ers”) It did not take long after I wrote that blog for the most notable face of crim­i­nal sup­port in Jamaica to emerge in sup­port of the most heart­less, bru­tal, cold-blood­ed mur­der­ers on our planet.

Carolyn Gomes is prob­a­bly a decent woman, but she is woe­ful­ly mis­guid­ed. I too believe every­one is enti­tled to pro­tec­tions under the laws, but Gomes by her actions have made it sig­nif­i­cant­ly and abun­dant­ly clear that she has used the Agency she heads (Jamaicans for Justice) as a tool against law enforce­ment and as a source of sup­port for the most hard­ened mur­der­ers oper­at­ing in Jamaica. There is no ratio­nal expla­na­tion for the craven posi­tions she and her agency takes in the defense of crim­i­nals, with­out even an attempt to bal­ance that unmit­i­gat­ed sup­port with empa­thy for crime vic­tims who have suf­fered at the hands of these mur­der­ers. As one could rea­son­ably expect she wast­ed no time in com­ing out in defense of these crim­i­nals , not sug­gest­ing, but demand­ing that mem­bers of the mil­i­tary be removed from the remand cen­ter, and effec­tive con­trol of prisoners. 

Make no mis­take this will hap­pen. Never mind that author­i­ties have cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly stat­ed that the high-pro­file crim­i­nals at the heart of this issue are doing so because they want exact­ly what Gomes wants for them. They want to be removed from the con­trol of the Military, they want to be returned to gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion where they will be under the super­vi­sion of inept, poor­ly trained,corrupt cor­rec­tion offi­cers(warders).

This begs the ques­tion was this response coör­di­nat­ed with the brief filed in the Supreme Court on behalf of the same crim­i­nals? As I point­ed out yes­ter­day these crim­i­nals have no estab­lished source of income as far as this blog­ger knows, so where does the mon­ey come from to pay the high-priced crim­i­nal lawyers who fall over them­selves to rep­re­sent them in the high­est court in the coun­try? Is the mon­ey com­ing from the same source as the funds that keep (JFJ) in busi­ness? Or does (JFJ) gets fund­ed from the same pool that pays the high-priced (vul­tures)? Ask your­selves the ques­tion , where do these men get the funds to pay these high-priced lawyers (vul­tures)? And yes my dear friend Mac They are vul­tures, and they do dou­ble as law-mak­ers , there is no dis­crep­an­cy there. That state­ment is a fact, you see my friend it may be an incon­ve­nient truth ‚but the truth nonetheless.

There are innu­mer­able cas­es, too many to men­tion of Justices on courts at var­i­ous lev­els of the Judiciary in Jamaica who rou­tine­ly grant bail to crim­i­nals after they are arrest­ed for seri­ous crimes like mur­der and rape , they prompt­ly go out kill or rape again are grant­ed bail again and again and again to com­mit the same crimes some­times up to five times over, even as they await tri­al for the first case on which were charged.

Jamaican Judges argue that bail was not intend­ed to be puni­tive, they argue bail was not intend­ed to be pun­ish­ment. That may be all well and good accord­ing to British Judges, (which I will come back to). Since bail was not meant to be pun­ish­ment who argues for the vic­tims who are rou­tine­ly gunned down on almost every street cor­ner of Kingston and oth­er cities in Jamaica, in broad day­light, as onlook­ers stand there trans­fixed, too scared to move, too scared to tell police who did it, even though they know the per­pe­tra­tors? Too scared to speak , know­ing if they tell they will be next. From Hagley Park road to Slipe road, from Tower Street to Matthews lane the blood of Jamaicans con­tin­ue to run while Judges fid­dle over seman­tics, refus­ing to lock crim­i­nals away for the max­i­mum time allowed by law. If Judges con­tin­ue to make the same argu­ments then yes the law is an ass and the Judges are even big­ger Asses. 

England ‚the for­mer colo­nial pow­er Jamaicans quote, and seek to emu­late, do not make the same argu­ments in defense of their cit­i­zens. London is one of the most pro­tect­ed cities in the world, there are hun­dreds of thou­sands of cam­eras that lit­er­al­ly stitch togeth­er the secu­ri­ty of the city into man­age­able nerve cen­ters where secu­ri­ty pro­fes­sion­als mon­i­tor the every move of Londoner in an effort to make sure the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of that city is pre­served. Whether one believes in big broth­er hav­ing that much con­trol is a legit­i­mate argu­ment to be debat­ed, but the results are impos­si­ble to deny. 

In a sen­tence, coun­tries which val­ue their cit­i­zens under­stand that secu­ri­ty is job num­ber one.

It is not about crash pro­gramme work, it is not about faux tears of car­ing , nations do not thrive on hugs and plat­i­tudes. Jamaica’s Judges like the politi­cians are com­plic­i­ty respon­si­ble for the high rate of crim­i­nal­i­ty that con­tin­ue to plague the nation. I spent 10 years in the Police force and I left it know­ing that I could not make a dif­fer­ence serv­ing in that depart­ment, I refused to be con­sumed by a sys­tem in which the peo­ple who risk their lives are set up to fail. Many peo­ple are fooled by the “mis­ter bigs” who hand over a car to the com­mis­sion­er or a cou­ple of motor­cy­cles here and there. I would much rather see peo­ple with pow­er in Jamaica use those pow­ers to lob­by for leg­is­la­tion which puts crim­i­nals in prison where they belong.

Then again I won’t hold my breath, some of the most pow­er­ful in the suits and tie, are the most pow­er­ful gang leaders.