Why Can’t Both Parties Work Together To Eliminate Crime…

Seeking to score cheap political points is what politicians do. In a recent audio blog I made reference to that very issue as it relates to the ongoing blood-shed in Jamaica. The Minister of National Security Robert Montague’s said that among the issues his ministry was considering in attacking the crime monster is the resumption of hanging.

Montague said then quote: “Government remains committed to mobilizing all the resources at its disposal to wage a “relentless war” against criminal elements “intent on destroying our nation”. To this end, he said the Administration is currently exploring the possible resumption of hanging.”
The Minister also said that state minister, Pearnel Charles Jr, has been asked to consult with several stakeholders, including the Ministry of Justice and Attorney General’s Office, to determine if there are any “legal impediments” to be addressed.

I thought the Minister’s state­ment was a lit­tle naïve’ con­sid­er­ing that in rough­ly 28 years not a sin­gle per­son has been hanged in Jamaica. The UK Privy Council which hears final appeals of Jamaican cas­es is opposed to hang­ing and in addi­tion Jamaica has signed on to International treaties which ties it’s hands as far as effec­tive­ly deal­ing with hard­ened crim­i­nals are concerned.

Notwithstanding the Minister’s state­ments indi­cat­ed to me that he was means test­ing to see what could poten­tial­ly be done toward the extra­or­di­nary high mur­der rate on the Island.
In response to Montague’s state­ment, oppo­si­tion spokesper­son on jus­tice and for­mer jus­tice min­is­ter Mark Golding opined that hang­ing won’t be hap­pen­ing. Of course he went on to out­line the rea­sons why he believed that there will be no resump­tion of hang­ing any­time soon.
Quote>“I do not regard min­is­ter Montague’s announce­ment, that the Government is seek­ing “to deter­mine if there are any legal imped­i­ments for the resump­tion of hang­ing in Jamaica”, as a seri­ous pol­i­cy ini­tia­tive that will be imple­ment­ed. The Government can’t hang more peo­ple; nor, as a prac­ti­cal mat­ter, can Parliament. Only the courts can make that hap­pen, and the courts are gov­erned by the rule of law and, in par­tic­u­lar, the human rights guar­an­tees in our Constitution,”

Ha ha , there you have it the Constitutional guar­an­teed shack­le. When the law becomes a shack­le then the shack­led becomes fools deserv­ing of being shackled.
This state­ment is proof pos­i­tive that the pre­vi­ous Administration had no inten­tion , desire or will do do any­thing about the run-away mur­ders which has gone on on it’s watch.
The fact of the mat­ter is that they view the issue of crime and law enforce­ment from the per­spec­tive of the accused mur­der­er , rather than from the per­spec­tive of the inno­cent victim.
Additionally , Golding said that “the reac­ti­va­tion of the death penal­ty after 28 years would bring con­dem­na­tion and adverse crit­i­cism on Jamaica from inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment part­ners that are not in sup­port of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment”.

You sim­ply can­not make this shit up.
Every so-called International part­ner of Jamaica have strict domes­tic laws and tough enforce­ment of those laws, no treaty super­sedes their indi­vid­ual con­sti­tu­tions. In the United States for exam­ple sev­er­al states do car­ry out the death penal­ty as opposed to oth­er states .Golding went on to say “Those states in the United States which retain and apply the death penal­ty (for exam­ple Texas) are not the states which enjoy the low­est mur­der rates in the US”.

I’m not sure where Golding gets his data from ‚here are the breakdowns.
States with the death penalty. 

Alabama Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Delaware Florida Georgia Idaho Indiana Kansas Kentucky

Louisiana Mississippi Missouri Montana Nevada New Hampshire North Carolina Ohio Oklahoma Oregon

Pennsylvania South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Virginia Washington WyomingALSO  — U.S. Gov’t  — U.S. Military

States with­out the death penalty> 

Alaska (1957) Connecticut (2012) Hawaii (1957) Illinois (2011) Iowa (1965) Maine (1887) Maryland (2013) Massachusetts (1984)

Michigan (1846) Minnesota (1911) Nebraska** (2015) New Jersey (2007) New Mexico* (2009) New York (2007)# North Dakota (1973) Rhode Island (1984)^

Vermont (1964) West Virginia (1965) Wisconsin (1853)ALSO Dist. of Columbia (1981)

The fact of the mat­ter is that most of the states which have done away with the death penal­ty are lib­er­al New England states. There are a few out­liers which are heav­i­ly con­ser­v­a­tive states ‚ie , Alaska, Iowa, West Virginia which has also abol­ished the death penal­ty as well.
My point is not in sup­port of the death penal­ty or against it . I sim­ply believe that Mark Golding’s argu­ments are not sup­port­ed by facts.
In fact, non-death penal­ty states like Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, New Mexico,Maryland, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia lit­er­al­ly dis­proves Golding’s arguments.
Now whether the death penal­ty is a deter­rent against vio­lent crimes I don’t know. What I do know is that the argu­ments that it’ isn’t are unproven and un-provable .
How does any­one know what the mur­der rates would be in states with the death penal­ty? Since we are unable to decide year by-by-year what the homi­cide rates would be in states with the death penal­ty, I don’t see how any­one can say it has­n’t worked at low­er­ing numbers.
Technically speak­ing whether or not one sup­port the death penal­ty , it may rea­son­ably be argued that those exe­cut­ed won’t return to kill again any­time soon.
So one can rea­son­ably say the death penal­ty is indeed a deter­rent, at least to those executed.

The real­i­ty is that Golding and many more like him do not care about reduc­ing crime.
They view crime as a nec­es­sary evil to be exploit­ed. In actu­al­i­ty that mind­set tran­scend polit­i­cal par­ty. It should come as no sur­prise that ele­ments in both par­ties do agree on crime. That is that noth­ing should be done about it.
Both Parties have cadres of Elitist lawyers and oth­er University grad­u­ates who believe in the lib­er­al crap­o­la that crime is fixed if you sim­ply give peo­ple jobs.
If every­one had jobs it’s quite pos­si­ble there would be less crime, or maybe cit­i­zens would have to deal with oth­er kinds of crimes.
In the Scandinavian region of Europe there are low­er crimes than say in the busy metrop­o­lis­es like New York or Los Angeles , but it is not exact­ly clear whether it’s because these soci­eties pro­vide jobs for their cit­i­zens or whether the fact that they are large­ly homo­ge­neous Caucasian soci­eties with built in social safe­ty nets. Or if they have a genet­ic pre-dis­po­si­tion not to com­mit crimes as some have argued.

Interest groups in both Jamaican polit­i­cal par­ties do see crime as some­thing to be lever­aged for polit­i­cal mileage. They approach crime from the per­spec­tive of the per­pe­tra­tors. Their default posi­tion is to secure the inter­est of the accused , not the abused.
It’s naïveté of the high­est order to assume that crime can be fixed once we make peo­ple prosperous.
The reverse is true, crime takes away from peo­ple’s lives, on that basis alone peo­ple’s lives can­not be made bet­ter with astro­nom­i­cal crime lev­els intact.
Crime and Safety in Jamaica

According to CHAPTER 6: CRIME AND ITS IMPACT ON BUSINESS IN JAMAICA Jamaica has the one of the high­est rates of vio­lent crime in the world.
A high rate of vio­lent crime can have many adverse reper­cus­sions: 1 It has a neg­a­tive impact on the invest­ment cli­mate and can deter or delay both domes­tic and for­eign invest­ment, and hence growth. 2 It leads to high­er cost of doing busi­ness, because of the need to employ dif­fer­ent forms of secu­ri­ty, and diverts invest­ment away from busi­ness expan­sion and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty improve­ment, and may lead to a less than opti­mal oper­at­ing strat­e­gy. 2 It leads to busi­ness loss­es, aris­ing from loot­ing, arson, theft, extor­tion and fraud. 3 It leads to loss of out­put because of reduced hours of oper­a­tion (includ­ing avoid­ing night shifts) or loss of work­days aris­ing from out­breaks of vio­lence, and avoid­ance of some types of eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty. 4 It also reduces out­put because of the tem­po­rary (from injury) or per­ma­nent (from mur­der) exit of indi­vid­u­als from the labor force. In the lat­ter case, the loss is not just cur­rent out­put, but the out­put in the remain­ing years of the individual’s work­ing life. 5 It can also cause a per­ma­nent shut-down of firms or relo­ca­tion to less crime-prone coun­tries. 2 It erodes the devel­op­ment of human cap­i­tal as well as social cap­i­tal and thus con­strains the poten­tial for growth. The crime sit­u­a­tion in Jamaica seems to be an impor­tant rea­son for migra­tion, since the fear of crime sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces the qual­i­ty of life. Crime and vio­lence have also been blamed for slow­ing down the rate of return of migrants back to Jamaica. Also, crime forces oth­er­wise pro­duc­tive indi­vid­u­als to occa­sion­al­ly exit the labor force because of vio­lent injury to them­selves or close asso­ciates, or because of social unrest in the com­mu­ni­ty. Violence in some com­mu­ni­ties also caus­es schools to close peri­od­i­cal­ly. Moreover, home and com­mu­ni­ty insta­bil­i­ty is not con­ducive to learn­ing and edu­ca­tion­al objectives.

We won’t soon fix Jamaica’s crime sit­u­a­tion unless a 180 degree turn is exe­cut­ed in the approach present­ly being used. Jamaicans sim­ply are too tol­er­ant of crime, too many , includ­ed some in posi­tions of pow­er are involved or ben­e­fit­ing from crime. That includes vio­lent crimes.
Others are not exposed enough to under­stand that the approach­es they espouse are mak­ing a bad sit­u­a­tion worse.
Since crime was equal­ly as high under the for­mer admin­is­tra­tion it would behoove Mark Golding to at least work with the new National secu­ri­ty Minister to find solu­tions instead of grand­stand­ing for the cameras.
Those state­ments do noth­ing to aid the fight, Sometimes sim­ply remain­ing silent is way more valu­able than offer­ing up a non-solution.