The Framework Of This Anti-crime Plan Has Been On The Table For A Decade

I am again pub­lish­ing my plan to the Jamaican Government, a plan I believe is not a panacea but one that will begin the slow and tedious process of extri­cat­ing Jamaica from the jaws of failure.
Each of the pil­lars of this plan will need dis­cus­sion, and some will require new leg­is­la­tion to be passed to effec­tu­ate the desired out­comes. Additionally, this plan will be most effec­tive if exe­cut­ed with a par­al­lel eco­nom­ic plan that revi­tal­izes depressed areas pro­vid­ing jobs to dis­pos­sessed youths.
Jamaican lead­ers have con­sis­tent­ly led the Jamaican peo­ple into believ­ing the lie that we can achieve first-world sta­tus on old-world infrastructure.
The Soviet Union crum­bled when it engaged with America, which had a robust mod­ern econ­o­my. The Americans could spend what they want­ed; the Soviets could­n’t because their econ­o­my was large­ly propped up by sub­sis­tence farm­ing in the satel­lite states.

Jamaica, too is head­ed for finan­cial and soci­etal col­lapse as suc­ces­sive admin­is­tra­tions of the two polit­i­cal par­ties have con­tin­ued on the same path of lying to the peo­ple that we can achieve pros­per­i­ty on old laws which (a) have lit­tle to zero deter­rent effect, (b) dri­ves away the pri­vate sec­tor, © increas­es crime, (d) sends a larg­er share of the dimin­ish­ing gross domes­tic prod­uct to the fleet­ing con­cept of secu­ri­ty with­in the present construct.
We need a new con­sti­tu­tion that reflects the Jamaican peo­ple’s needs today and for centuries.
We need to extri­cate our­selves from the colo­nial shack­les still on our brains as we remain teth­ered to Britain for no rea­son oth­er than being afraid to be independent.
We need new laws that man­date no zinc fences any­where as we encour­age our peo­ple, regard­less of their finan­cial stand­ing to learn to live in an open and free society.
Only when we take these rather sim­ple steps will we begin to see a reduc­tion in the num­ber of vio­lent crimes com­mit­ted in our country.
No plan will be a panacea or a sil­ver bul­let against what has been decades in the mak­ing, speak­ing of the entrenched crime situation.
Nevertheless, we need a cit­i­zen-focused plan that con­sid­ers the inter­est of law-abid­ing Jamaicans over those of crim­i­nals who decide to engage in a life of crime.

MY CRIME PLAN

(1) Strong penalties for violent crimes.

The penal­ties present­ly in place for vio­lent crimes, includ­ing mur­ders, are far too lenient and offer pre­cious deter­rent effects, if any.
Additionally, to clear court dock­et back­logs, the gov­ern­ment has devised poli­cies that offer mur­der-accused and oth­ers a 50% reduc­tion in their sen­tence in exchange for a guilty plea.
To begin with, the sen­tences hand­ed down for mur­der some­times are as low as sev­en (7) years; a 50% reduc­tion takes it down to ³¹⁄₂ years. If the accused is already in cus­tody because he was­n’t giv­en bail, they receive con­sid­er­a­tion for time served. Using this met­ric, a per­son final­ly con­vict­ed of mur­der may walk free from incar­cer­a­tion on the day they have been con­vict­ed of the crime.
In response to his sen­tenc­ing pat­terns in west­ern Jamaica, one of the judi­cia­ry mem­bers said the fol­low­ing. “If a rich man’s son “com­mits a crime, they expect lenien­cy,” but if a poor man com­mits a crime, they expect me to send him to prison.”
The judge cit­ed pro­ba­tion reports as being vital in play­ing a role in the sen­tenc­ing process. He argues that when the reports are looked at in some cas­es, many of the young boys involved had been involved in sport­ing activ­i­ties, includ­ing foot­ball. “You have to res­cue them,’ he said.
This judge spoke about mur­der­ers he released back into soci­ety after they were con­vict­ed, some­times on mul­ti­ple mur­der charges.
Here is an unelect­ed judge that is not answer­able to the peo­ple sup­plant­i­ng the already lax penal­ties in the laws with his idea of jus­tice. This must come to an end.

(2) Truth in sentencing.

Murder should car­ry a penal­ty of twen­ty-five (25) years on the low end and the high-end life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.
Judges should only be giv­en dis­cre­tion when vio­lence is used to cause some­one’s death when there was no intent. As in manslaugh­ter. For exam­ple, two peo­ple fight­ing, one push­es or punch­es the oth­er, who falls, hits his head, and dies.
In such a case, a judge may use their dis­cre­tion if the offend­er does not have a ver­i­fi­able vio­lent past on record.
The police cit­ed hun­dreds of ver­i­fi­able cas­es in which mur­der­ers and oth­er felons were released back onto the streets after they were arrest­ed. In most cas­es, offend­ers are charged with mur­der, and some­times sev­er­al counts of mur­der are grant­ed bail. Once released, they con­tin­ue on their mur­der spree, which usu­al­ly ends when they con­front the police with guns blazing.
The idea that judges see their roles as social work­ers instead of the fol­low­ing prece­dent as stip­u­lat­ed in paragraph(3) above demon­strates the need for manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences for cer­tain crime cat­e­gories, effec­tive­ly remov­ing that func­tion from the hands of judges. The break­down of law and order and the gen­er­al law­less­ness in the coun­try are direct­ly attrib­ut­able to the lax, com­plic­it, cor­rupt, and incom­pe­tent jus­tice sys­tem led by the Islands judges who refuse to fol­low precedent.
Instead of fix­ing that prob­lem as police offi­cers have been demand­ing for decades [a prob­lem I com­plained about over two decades ago while I was a serv­ing police offi­cer], they con­tin­ue blam­ing the police for com­plic­i­ty while ignor­ing this glar­ing problem.

(3) Mandatory Minimum sentences for violent crimes.

The sen­tences applied for mur­der and oth­er crimes of vio­lence are insuf­fi­cient to con­vey that vio­lence will not be tol­er­at­ed. As such, vio­lence has become almost the only con­flict res­o­lu­tion tool used by cit­i­zens who no longer fear the con­se­quences of their vio­lent actions.
Some peo­ple talk about human rights when­ev­er the sub­ject of penal­ties is being dis­cussed for vio­lent offend­ers as if their vic­tims are not enti­tled to con­sid­er­a­tion or have the right to life and free­dom from violence.
Our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem [must] be focused on the rights of crime vic­tims and law-abid­ing cit­i­zens over the rights of crime producers.
Pass laws that pro­tect the pop­u­la­tion and allow the apol­o­gists to do what they do ‑apol­o­gize and lob­by on behalf of murderers.

(4) Remove from the control of judges the sentence violent gangsters receive.

This sub-sec­tion is direct­ly relat­ed to sub-sec­tion 2 & 3 and is, for the most self-explanatory.

(5) Mandatory minimum of 25 years in prison and a maximum life without the possibility of parole for murder

See sub-sec­tion (2)

(6) No bail for accused murderers.

The bail act stip­u­lates that a defen­dant may be refused bail if he is like­ly to(a) re-offend, (b) like­ly to abscond and © like­ly to inter­fere with wit­ness­es. Despite these strong points for refusal of bail, the judi­cia­ry con­tin­ues to allow vio­lent mur­der­ers back onto the streets after arrest, with dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences to inno­cent, law-abid­ing cit­i­zens under the guise that bail should not be used as punishment.
When a judge advances this argu­ment, it becomes clear that the life of the accused is more impor­tant than the vic­tims they are accused of tak­ing. This must stop.

(7) Speedy trial for murder accused.

The law guar­an­tees an accused per­son­’s right to a speedy tri­al. A speedy tri­al is cen­tral to the rights of per­sons accused of a crime and the aggriev­ed party.
It isn’t easy to make the case that the Jamaican state has ful­filled that guar­an­tee to per­sons it takes into custody.
The Justice Ministry has embarked on ill-advised mea­sures to free up court dock­ets, ulti­mate­ly aimed at speedy future trials.
I’m not con­vinced that allow­ing mur­der­ers to walk free if they do not receive a time­ly tri­al is the way to fix this problem.
But then again, the sys­tem was not built to care about crime vic­tims’ rights.
Because this plan espous­es no bail for the mur­der accused, a speedy tri­al is a crit­i­cal under­pin­ning of the former.

(8) Change criminal-focused strategy to victim-focused.

Every per­son has a right to be treat­ed with respect even when arrest­ed and accused of com­mit­ting a crime. The idea that a per­son is inno­cent until proven guilty is not an aca­d­e­m­ic or the­o­ret­i­cal con­cept but a fun­da­men­tal right that gov­ern­ments must respect.
Even con­vict­ed crim­i­nals enjoy cer­tain but not all, rights they had pre-con­vic­tion. The fact that crim­i­nals do not enjoy the same rights they had before they com­mit­ted crimes seems to be lost on leg­is­la­tors because of pow­er­ful and influ­en­tial lob­by­ing efforts from spe­cial inter­ests in JAMAICA.
Lost in the shuf­fle is the fact that there are vic­tims and their fam­i­lies whom every­one for­gets who suf­fer due to the crimes their assailants com­mit­ted against them.
At every turn, there are pon­tif­i­ca­tors and self-aggran­diz­ing, self-appoint­ed experts advo­cat­ing for mur­der­ous crim­i­nals. The Government has a sacred duty to pro­tect the rights and safe­ty of the Jamaican people.

(9) Create national security policy based on Jamaica’s unique needs, not what foreign interests want.

Jamaica has woven itself into a web of inter­na­tion­al treaties, mak­ing it almost impos­si­ble to gov­ern itself. A tru­ly inde­pen­dent nation has no oblig­a­tion to sign on to every treaty and con­ven­tion it sees to seem a part of the crowd.
A nation [must] exam­ine each treaty and con­ven­tion to see whether or not the needs of its peo­ple are best served.
A new con­sti­tu­tion would allow the Jamaican peo­ple to say through a bal­lot mea­sure whether it approves or dis­ap­proves of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, for exam­ple, and not be dic­tat­ed to by a court of the colo­nial master.
No inde­pen­dent demo­c­ra­t­ic nation should give away its right to self-gov­ern by sign­ing on to inter­na­tion­al treaties and con­ven­tions that are anti­thet­i­cal to the good of its people.

(10) Invest heavily in criminal investigation techniques.

Two of the more effec­tive things that a police depart­ment can do to reduce crime are (1) deter would-be crim­i­nals and (2) have the capac­i­ty to find and pros­e­cute those who do com­mit crimes.
Jamaican law enforce­ment has demon­strat­ed that it can bring crim­i­nals to jus­tice if giv­en the prop­er train­ing and tools to do the job. However, the inter­est of the force and the Jamaican cit­i­zens have not been served as it should for decades, as the JCF has been starved of the train­ing, resources, and remu­ner­a­tions it needs to get the job done.
The JCF, as a law enforce­ment agency, through­out its exis­tence, has not demon­strat­ed or shown the prop­er respect detec­tives deserve. Detectives are not com­pen­sat­ed or pro­mot­ed com­men­su­rate with the val­ue of their work.
I know that the same argu­ments could be made for the entire force, and I may be some­what biased, hav­ing served in crim­i­nal investigations.
Nevertheless, those who served in crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions know it is not a depart­ment where shifts and clock-watch­ing matter.
The gov­ern­ment must show respect to crim­i­nal detec­tives and give them the respect and reward they deserve.

(11) Hire more judges that were former prosecutors.

This plan has com­po­nents that would remove cer­tain func­tions from judges’ purview. To effec­tu­ate bet­ter out­comes with greater clar­i­ty, the gov­ern­ment should, as a mat­ter of pol­i­cy, hire more lawyers who come from the pros­e­cu­tion side of the aisle to become judges.
Even with inef­fec­tive legal penal­ties for the most seri­ous crimes, judges con­tin­ue to mock the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem through polit­i­cal and cor­rupt means.
From Parish courts to the Supreme court, judges and’ jus­tices’ con­tin­u­al­ly act as defense attor­neys to the most dan­ger­ous killers brought before the courts.
Not only are they act­ing as defac­to lawyers for the defense, but they also have, over the decades, gone out of their way to be dis­re­spect­ful and hos­tile to police offi­cers and prosecutors.

(12) Build Prisons.

Whenever gov­ern­ments decide to build pris­ons, it cre­ates a flur­ry of heat­ed con­ver­sa­tions for and against them. However, gov­ern­ing is dif­fer­ent from talk­ing. Therefore, as the gov­ern­ment has a duty to build schools, hos­pi­tals, police and fire sta­tions, roads, and oth­er infra­struc­ture, it is also oblig­at­ed to build pris­ons to house seri­ous offenders.
Because Jamaica is forced to accept the dic­tates of its for­mer colo­nial mas­ter that it can­not hang mur­der­ers, it must ensure that they are not released back into soci­ety to cre­ate the may­hem they have been allowed to cre­ate for decades.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.