Jamaica’s Governments Have Refused To Face The Hard Truths On Crime

It is a universally agreed fact that crime thrives where it is allowed to.
As it is in well-run nations in which democracy is built on the rule of law, so too are totalitarian nations conversant that crime must be suppressed at all cost.

Unfortunately for our small Island Nation of Jamaica, that memo seems to have got­ten lost in the shuffle.
Crime affects nations in vary­ing ways out­side the obvi­ous dan­ger it pos­es to life, lib­er­ty, and property.
Crime impov­er­ish­es nations and destroys gen­er­a­tions of peo­ple yet unborn.
The [Borgen Project] argues that Beyond the pro­tect­ed walls of the all-inclu­sive hotels, crime, vio­lence, and pover­ty plague the pop­u­la­tions of Caribbean nations. While tourism may be grow­ing back to pre-reces­sion lev­els in pock­ets of resorts, most of the pop­u­la­tion con­tin­ues to bat­tle with ris­ing rape, mur­der, and pover­ty levels.

In 2013 Professor Anthony Clayton of the University of the West Indies, in a report pre­pared for the Ministry of National Security, called A New Approach: National Security Policy for Jamaica said, for exam­ple, that the direct med­ical cost of injuries due to inter­per­son­al vio­lence account­ed for near­ly 12% of Jamaica’s total health expen­di­ture in 2006, while pro­duc­tiv­i­ty loss­es due to inter­per­son­al vio­lence-relat­ed injuries account­ed for approx­i­mate­ly 4% of Jamaica’s GDP. If the lat­ter is added to the esti­mate of secu­ri­ty costs, then the com­bined total is 7.1% of Jamaica’s GDP.”
It is impor­tant to con­sid­er that seri­ous crime has con­tin­ued to rise each year since that report and has been done, which means that each year crime con­tin­ues to take a larg­er chunk of the nation’s gross domes­tic prod­uct (GDP) with no clear end in sight.
More data is avail­able that shows in real dol­lars and cents just how crime dri­ves Jamaicans deep­er and deep­er into pover­ty year over year. Not pover­ty dri­ving crime as some would have you believe, but crime dri­ving poverty.

WHY?

Over the last sev­er­al decades, ’ var­i­ous stud­ies have been done which have all seem to con­clude that crime and vio­lence in the Caribbean and Jamaica, in par­tic­u­lar, may be attrib­uted to poverty.
Of course, it is easy to set­tle on pover­ty if you want to be intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­hon­est or plain lazy.
There is no deny­ing that if a per­son is hun­gry and has no mon­ey, they go into sur­vival mode and are like­ly to steal to survive.
On the oth­er hand, if you look at the real dri­vers of crime, a‑la greed, gangs, drugs, depor­ta­tions cou­pled with the nations refusal to put a foot on the neck of crim­i­nals, you begin to get a clear­er pic­ture of why Jamaica has con­tin­ued to have a per­va­sive and grow­ing crime problem.

TRUTH…

There are for­eign pub­li­ca­tions that have naive­ly writ­ten at length about the Government’s attempt to arrest crime with­out an atten­dant deep­er under­stand­ing of the role politi­cians and pol­i­tics play in cre­at­ing and exac­er­bat­ing seri­ous crime pro­lif­er­a­tion on the Island.
Those of us who came out of the trench­es and had a deep­er under­stand­ing of how the Island inner cities and towns work, is quite con­fi­dent when we say, “no, pover­ty is absolute­ly not respon­si­ble for the mas­sive esca­la­tion of shoot­ings, sex­u­al assaults, and mur­ders sweep­ing the Island.”
Additionally, many nations with far low­er liv­ing stan­dards do not have Jamaica’s astro­nom­ic crime problem.

SAD PROGNOSIS

It has been said that Jamaicans have a vio­lent predisposition.
I am not in a posi­tion to lit­i­gate that. I believe that many peo­ple in any place who are allowed to be vio­lent to each oth­er, with at worse a slap on the wrist, may very well con­tin­ue to use vio­lence as a con­flict res­o­lu­tion mechanism.
Unfortunately, there is a regret­table mind­set in the coun­try among the most influ­en­tial that despite the seri­ous­ness of the crimes com­mit­ted, the offend­ers should be giv­en a slap on the wrist as pun­ish­ment for their actions.
That per­cep­tion sup­ports my posi­tion that seri­ous crimes in Jamaica and a lack of a seri­ous puni­tive com­po­nent, has pre­cious lit­tle to do with pover­ty and every­thing to do with rich and pow­er­ful peo­ple want­i­ng to stay out of prison for their own crimes.
This writer has con­sis­tent­ly artic­u­lat­ed a cohe­sive and cogent path for­ward to deal with this mon­ster plagu­ing the nation.
Among my sug­ges­tions are the need to pass tougher laws, bet­ter train, equip and pay police offi­cers, build more cour­t­hous­es and hire more judges from the pros­e­cu­tion’s side of the fence and hire more pros­e­cu­tors as well.

FRUSTRATED

Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) Paula Llewelyn recent­ly voiced frus­tra­tion at the grow­ing case­load her office is forced to han­dle with a staff that is not grow­ing to meet the demands.
Llewelyn argues that her plea for more pros­e­cu­tors has basi­cal­ly fall­en on deaf ears.
Her office was told that the min­istry was await­ing com­plet­ing a gen­er­al orga­ni­za­tion­al review before her request for addi­tion­al staff could be grant­ed. However, to date, she has not been giv­en the cour­tesy of a response. (jamaicaob​serv​er​.com)
As cas­es con­tin­ue to pile up at the DPP’s office, some con­tin­ue to scape­goat the police for not doing enough to cur­tail crime.
So my ques­tion to those who make those scur­rilous and mali­cious state­ments is this, have you asked Government, past or present, why they have refused to build cour­t­hous­es, improve the bail act, bet­ter train and pay police offi­cers, among the things need­ed to be done?

The police arrest mur­der­ers at a mer­ry clip, but lib­er­al judges with their own agen­das are thwart­ing their efforts.
Judges con­tin­ue to use the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem as a revolv­ing door, result­ing in more homi­cides as a consequence.
While crim­i­nals are being let loose on the soci­ety and cas­es can­not get to tri­al because of the short­ages frus­trat­ing, the chief pros­e­cu­tor, the Island’s min­is­ter of jus­tice, is lob­by­ing for mur­der cas­es over five years to be purged from the court dockets.
When you con­sid­er the for­gone, a bet­ter pic­ture focus­es on where they are tak­ing the country.
This is not about par­ty pol­i­tics; it is about facts and fig­ures; nei­ther par­ty has clean hands.
Neither par­ty has demon­strat­ed a will­ing­ness to point the coun­try in the right direc­tion so that the hard work of tak­ing back the coun­try can begin.
It must be under­stood that even though every­thing has been done at the moment, if the poli­cies being employed are not com­men­su­rate with an appro­pri­ate res­o­lu­tion of the crime issue, it is all for naught.
The poli­cies being employed can­not resolve the Island’s crip­pling crime prob­lem, so that you may form your own conclusions.

The strate­gies need­ed to begin the south­ward trend in seri­ous crime once under­tak­en will leave no doubt in the minds of those who would engage in and or offer sup­port and suc­cor to crim­i­nals that this is different.
Nothing past or present has occurred, which would con­vince them that the Government can put the brakes on their activities.
The right strate­gies will inex­orably and cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly be clear to all that Jamaica has final­ly decid­ed to do some­thing about this problem.
Thus far, we have seen noth­ing, sug­gest­ing that there is even a recog­ni­tion, much less a declared will to seri­ous­ly tack­le the problem.
On that basis, crime will con­tin­ue to increase, more inno­cent peo­ple will, unfor­tu­nate­ly, become vic­tims in the process.

To begin the process, the gov­ern­ment must stand up so that those who would com­mit crimes may stand down.
That will only be accom­plished when the pol­i­cy is actu­al­ly made in con­sul­ta­tion with real Jamaicans and not with for­eign-fund­ed enti­ties with their own agen­das anti­thet­i­cal to Jamaica’s interests.
The aver­age Jamaican who plays by the rules is being sac­ri­ficed for the good of those who have killed time and again.
The human rights of the guilty super­sedes that of his victim.
Unless we dis­pense with those who pros­ti­tute human rights as a means to make a name for them­selves, crime will con­tin­ue to escalate.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
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