Police Face Long Gun-battles With Heavily Armed Gangs: Oh By The Way Lets Give Gangsters We’ve Locked Away Conjugal Visits…

You need a lit­tle rest and relax­ation in Jamaica just take a life, no big deal you will not be seen as a dan­ger to soci­ety, every­one will vouch for your char­ac­ter and you get a tiny slap on the wrist.
Oh did I men­tion that- that is in the event you are caught?
Right, because the vast major­i­ty of mur­ders on the Island are nev­er solved and those which are solved if not over­turned in the court of appeals the defen­dants are giv­en a slight slap on the wrist.

Diandra Jarrett was sen­tenced by Justice Nicole Simmonds in the Gun Court at the Supreme Court after she was found guilty of the mur­der of Damian Bowen. The 27-year-old ven­dor will be eli­gi­ble for parole after serv­ing 10 years. Bowen, a 34-year-old welder, died after he was stabbed in his neck and chest dur­ing an alter­ca­tion at a par­ty on Montpelier Road in Hanover, on June 1, 2013.

Bowen’s baby moth­er and Jarrett were involved in a fight. He tried to sep­a­rate them but was stabbed twice with a knife. Bowen’s baby moth­er was also stabbed in her chest, leg, arm, breast, and chin. The dis­pute between the women alleged­ly stemmed from an ear­li­er argument.

Jarrett’s lawyer, Martin Thomas, also begged for lenien­cy and urged the judge to treat her as some­one who had made a mistake.He told the judge to bear in mind that his client was not an aggres­sive per­son and that the inci­dent was com­plete­ly out­side of her usu­al behavior.Martin also told the judge that mem­bers of Jarrett’s com­mu­ni­ty have attest­ed to the fact that she was not a trou­ble­mak­er, and have also asked for mer­cy for her as she did not pose a threat to the com­mu­ni­ty.http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​t​e​a​r​s​-​f​l​o​w​-​a​f​t​e​r​-​w​o​m​a​n​-​g​e​t​s​-​l​i​f​e​-​s​e​n​t​e​n​c​e​-​f​o​r​-​k​i​l​l​i​n​g​-​f​r​i​e​n​d​_​1​0​5​8​1​6​?​p​r​o​f​i​l​e​=​1​373

Here is a sit­u­a­tion in which a vio­lent per­son com­mits mur­der and attempt­ed mur­der and the defense lawyer argues that she is not vio­lent and that she pos­es no threat to the society.
In what world is that ratio­nal think­ing, tell us please what would qual­i­fy as a dan­ger to the Jamaican pub­lic now that we know a homi­cide and the attempt to kill anoth­er per­son does not qual­i­fy as dangerous?
Now I do under­stand the num­bers game, in a coun­try as vio­lent as Jamaica I do under­stand that mur­der and attempt­ed mur­der does­n’t real­ly cre­ate a stir, after all, there are so many mass mur­der­ers walk­ing around with­out con­se­quence I do get the arguments.
Tell that to the deceased man and the seri­ous­ly injured woman whom she intend­ed to kill as well.
Jamaica does not have one of the high­est mur­der rates in the world in the abstract. The char­ac­ter­is­tics which foment mur­der are all there in a per­fect storm of acqui­es­cence and complicity.

She left the scene then returned to com­mit mur­der and felo­nious wound­ing. Now every­one says this is not her char­ac­ter. It is exact­ly her char­ac­ter, this is exact­ly who she is, she had ade­quate time to cool off.
I once again call for min­i­mum sen­tences in the law which remove from the hands of judges the abil­i­ty to issue sen­tences like these. The sen­tence in this regard ought not be in the hands of any judge. The sen­tence should have been manda­to­ry 25 to life mean­ing you do not get out until you have served 25 years and have demon­strat­ed that you have adjust­ed enough to be allowed back into soci­ety. Mandatory min­i­mums of 25 years to life or life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole is to pun­ish offend­ers and pre­vent would be offend­ers. This cav­al­cade of mur­der will con­tin­ue in this mur­der incu­ba­tor as all of the com­po­nents of mur­der growth are encour­aged in this country.

As if this was not enough the Minister of National Security Robert Montague announced that pris­on­ers will be receiv­ing con­ju­gal visits.

Montague said he believes that allow­ing inmates to have sex­u­al rela­tions with their part­ners will be ben­e­fi­cial. On the mat­ter of prison reform, the nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter indi­cat­ed that the Government con­tin­ues to intro­duce more ini­tia­tives to reha­bil­i­tate inmates. He not­ed that the coun­try has a recidi­vism rate of 47 per cent.

With almost half of the peo­ple con­vict­ed and jailed return­ing to prison, it seems to me that prison is not serv­ing the pur­pose for which it was intend­ed. Prisoners have cell phones, drugs, are allowed out to vis­it their girls and men, are allowed to make music and now to reg­u­lar­ize sex while they live at tax­pay­ers expense is a bridge too far.

But this is what the peo­ple vot­ed for when they vot­ed for Andrew Holness.
Don’t get me wrong if I was reg­is­tered to vote in Jamaica and was there I would have vot­ed for him as the PNP is not an option for me based on its policies.
Our coun­try is on a col­li­sion course with real­i­ty and it’s all because the lame rum head peo­ple in posi­tions of lead­er­ship ought not to have been giv­en those posi­tions of trust. Simply put the dis­tance between the lead­ers and the crim­i­nals on the streets are a mighty short hop.
That explains the absolute lack of desire on their part to leg­is­late and sup­port a pol­i­cy which seri­ous­ly says to crim­i­nals “no more”.