This Is Bigger Than Kartel…

One of the reasons Jamaicans are so predisposed to using violence as a conflict resolution mechanism is our inability to do deductive reasoning.
Now I know this will draw howls of condemnation from the opinion police who will tell me I cannot make a blanket statement about a whole country.
To those I say I spent 31 years of my life living in Jamaica and I still interact with Jamaicans every day, I have that right.

There is no greater barom­e­ter for mea­sur­ing the rot and decay which has infect­ed Jamaica than the com­ments direct­ed At Lisa Hanna the for­mer Minister of Youth in the past People’s National Party Administration and mem­ber of par­lia­ment for St. Ann South Eastern.

This writer and this medi­um stand solid­ly beside Lisa Hanna on her posi­tion that degen­er­a­tive music should not be played on Radios or on Television.
Ms. Hanna has been exco­ri­at­ed and abused ver­bal­ly for dar­ing to speak to some­thing many in her own par­ty has not spo­ken to , includ­ing the leader of her par­ty and for­mer Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller.

Not only has Ms Hanna been ver­bal­ly assault­ed, she has report­ed to the police that the degen­er­a­tive cretins who hero wor­ship DJ Adidja Palmer (Vybes Kartel) are threat­en­ing her life.
Understandably peo­ple who dare to have an opin­ion out­side the nar­row pri­mal world­view of the semi-lit­er­ate mass­es are going to become a tar­get of their venom.
As an opin­ion writer I have cer­tain­ly had my share of vapid push-back and even death threats direct­ed at me.

None of that non­sense has ever caused me to lose any sleep.
In the first instance peo­ple can take your life they can­not kill your ideas.
Secondly many of those who make threats from the obscu­ri­ty of anonymi­ty would­n’t dare speak that garbage to my face.

Nevertheless I was real­ly impressed with Lisa Hanna’s response to her detrac­tors whose only response to intel­li­gent dis­course are threats of violence.
Responding to the death threats Ms Hanna said this:

“When it comes to women’s, and espe­cial­ly children’s rights, I speak out with­out fear of any reprisal,” “I pray that all Jamaicans who val­ue com­mon decen­cy will find the courage to push back against this new nor­mal and defend Jamaica’s true cul­ture. If we lose this bat­tle, how­ev­er unpop­u­lar the bat­tle or its choos­ing may be, we will have lost Jamaica.”

We are pre­cip­i­tous­ly close to los­ing Jamaica I am afraid , so even as I stand with Hanna on this issue she has been part of an Administration which has done much dam­age to the rule of law in our country.
Nevertheless as a Jamaican I refuse to allow par­ti­san polit­i­cal views to col­or my reac­tion to whats hap­pen­ing on this issue.

The Jamaican Prime Minister has all but abdi­cat­ed his respon­si­bil­i­ty on crime by (1) announc­ing some pin-prick mea­sures which are not worth the paper they are writ­ten on ‚and (2) By announc­ing that he will not be allow­ing the Police to go out and aggres­sive­ly do their jobs.

Lets not lose sight of the fact that a Government’s pri­ma­ry role is the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of it’s citizens.
It must be on that basis and that basis only, must any judge­ment of the Prime Minister’s effi­ca­cy be judged.
Clearly Holness has decid­ed that hold­ing and solid­i­fy­ing pow­er is more impor­tant that break­ing the back of the epi­dem­ic of mur­der and rape of inno­cent chil­dren , women and the most vul­ner­a­ble with­ing the society.

Without attempt­ing to speak for Ms Hanna who is quite capa­ble of speak­ing for her­self, here are a few facts .
There is no ques­tion that Adidja Palmer is a tal­ent­ed disc jock­ey , I say that because many of the com­ments around this issue are that peo­ple are envi­ous of the artiste.
Of course Like I said ini­tial­ly, those are knee-jerk respons­es from those who can­not artic­u­late an intel­lec­tu­al or rea­soned response.

That said, this dis­cus­sion has less to do with Vybes Kartel and more to do with the con­tent of his work.
Now there are those who say that Palmer is not the only artiste to record music from behind bars.
True . But regard­less of local­i­ty, regard­less of geog­ra­phy, when­ev­er an artiste, a Writer or any­one else, is allowed to con­tin­ue their trade or even start to do so from behind bars, it is because the con­tent they are releas­ing is one of mea cul­pa and reform.
“It can­not be music made by a con­vict­ed mur­der­er which con­tin­ue to spew degen­er­a­tive invec­tive which cor­rupt the minds of the young and impressionable.

A con­vict so priv­i­leged under­stands he/​she is allowed to do so as part of his/​her resti­tu­tion to society.
It does not include under any cir­cum­stances a sce­nario in which said artiste gets to con­tin­ue doing harm to society.

Before we deal with all of that we must explain one thing.
A cit­i­zen who com­mits a crime and has been law­ful­ly con­vict­ed in a court of law, has by def­i­n­i­tion of that con­vic­tion sur­ren­dered many of his/​her rights.
There is a sim­ple way to avoid los­ing ones rights in that way.
Do not com­mit crimes.

The fact that Vybes Kartel’s music is play­ing on radio and tele­vi­sion is not a prob­lem which should be laid at the feet of Kartel.
It’ is a sear­ing indict­ment of the cor­rupt nature of the agen­cies of Government and the crim­i­nal­ly com­plic­it nature of our coun­try’s lead­ers who lack the char­ac­ter and moral for­ti­tude to shout down cor­rup­tion and crime in all it’s forms.

This ker­fuf­fle would be a good time for Andrew Holness, in the process of bi-par­ti­san­ship, to stand beside Lisa Hanna , effec­tive­ly throw­ing the pow­er of his office in a push-back against the forces of anarchy.
Of course the urge to gain trac­tion and score cheap polit­i­cal points are far more impor­tant than show­ing a uni­fied front against degen­er­a­tive behavior.
Many of the com­ments on this issue are absolute­ly wor­thy of dis­cus­sion , even though at their core they lack cer­tain basic understandings.
Sure Kartel did not car­ry a record­ing stu­dio with him to prison , it is naïve to make that con­tention at a time when an artiste can voice lyrics on a cel­lu­lar device , save the record­ed lyrics onto a data card and send it out to be worked onto a tract and ulti­mate­ly to be distributed.

Despite this there has been report­ing in some Jamaican medi­ums on November 16^th of last year that Kartel was removed from the Horizon Remand cen­ter to the Tower street Prison.
Some have insist­ed that he was moved in order to facil­i­tate his abil­i­ty to con­tin­ue record­ing . Others have stri­dent­ly argued that his music which has con­tin­ued to dom­i­nate local air­waves were record­ed before his incarceration.
As far as I know there are no laws which pre­cludes a vis­cous con­vict­ed mur­der­er from record­ing after his incar­cer­a­tion. But com­mon sense ‚and com­mon decen­cy on the part of Jamaican author­i­ties would have pre­vailed , pre­vent­ing vio­lent mur­der and misog­y­nist lyrics from invad­ing pub­lic air­waves, and cer­tain­ly be dead sure that no mur­der­er could con­tin­ue to do so.

This is big­ger than Vybes Kartel or any oth­er con­vict , so to the die hard legions of Kartel fanat­ics , we hear you and to some degree your insis­tence that this was hap­pen­ing before Kartel are indeed true..
But even as we con­cede your point you must sur­ren­der the notion that a con­vict, any con­vict , have the same God-giv­en or con­sti­tu­tion­al right enjoyed before conviction.
You must divest your­selves of that ridicu­lous notion.

Jamaica is the way it is because of weak-kneed lead­er­ship and in many cas­es lead­er­ship which is indis­tin­guish­able from the crim­i­nals in the garrisons.
Many Jamaicans includ­ing Kartel’s legion of fanat­ics do trav­el to oth­er countries.
When they do they obey the laws of those host nations. Those who don’t gets kicked out.

They end up back in Jamaica, a place where they are allowed to pro­mul­gate and per­pet­u­ate anarchy,mayhem and murder.
Successive Administrations of both major polit­i­cal par­ties, includ­ing the present one , have con­sis­tent­ly refused to remove their hands from med­dling in law enforcement.
In fact it is rea­son­able to argue that they have active­ly enhanced the process­es which allow for the astro­nom­i­cal crime rate and the law­less­ness which exist today.
Both by actions they take and in some cas­es actions they refuse to take.

Bob Cameron PhD in Criminal Justice from Walden University wrote.
It’s actu­al­ly prob­a­bly not a good idea to put peo­ple togeth­er in a prison, but our options for pun­ish­ment are fair­ly lim­it­ed. Actually, pris­ons are an improve­ment over ear­ly pun­ish­ments that involved pri­mar­i­ly putting peo­ple to death for any­thing and every­thing (see the Code of Hammurabi for some fun details about that). 
The use of pris­ons has changed con­sid­er­ably over the years, but they are essen­tial­ly the same as they’ve always been in terms of being grad­u­ate schools of crime. Placing crim­i­nal­ly-mind­ed folks with oth­ers who share the same world­view can be very coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. But, there are impor­tant rea­sons that we con­tin­ue to use pris­ons, and there are some emerg­ing ways to reduce the risk of recidi­vism among incar­cer­at­ed offenders.
First, it’s impor­tant to under­stand that prison is not all about chang­ing peo­ple’s behav­ior, con­trary to pop­u­lar belief. There are actu­al­ly five gen­er­al­ly accept­ed goals of sen­tenc­ing (ret­ri­bu­tion, deter­rence, inca­pac­i­ta­tion, restora­tion, and reha­bil­i­ta­tion) the first three of which are accom­plished pri­mar­i­ly through incarceration.

Murderers are sent to prison because some soci­eties are not allowed to kill them. This is gen­er­al­ly so in some lib­er­al soci­eties here in the west­ern world.
For sev­er­al rea­sons some log­i­cal, many west­ern nations have declared a mora­to­ri­um on killing murderers.
The default process then is to incar­cer­ate no mat­ter the clar­i­ty of the evi­dence, no mat­ter the heinous nature of the killings.
Fine , so we alter­na­tive­ly and stu­pid­ly embark on an expen­sive process of incar­cer­at­ing mur­der­ers, regard­less of the grue­some nature of their crimes, regard­less of the amount of inno­cent lives they extinguished.

We do so as soci­eties because we have acqui­esced to the most lib­er­al view­points. We have bowed to those who osten­si­bly places soci­ety at a dou­ble disadvantage.
(1) From the harm done as a result of the killing of an inno­cent mem­ber of soci­ety and (2) forc­ing soci­ety to pay for the care of that mur­der­er for as long as he/​she lives.

It is that crim­i­nal cod­dling point of view which brings us to hav­ing to engage in a con­ver­sa­tion of this kind where those with the most crim­i­nal­ly sup­port­ing view points push­es the enve­lope on what fur­ther accom­mo­da­tions and crea­ture com­forts may be giv­en to con­vict­ed murderers.

Convicted crim­i­nals have no right to record music. They may do so con­sis­tent with the nation’s laws and rules gov­ern­ing indi­vid­ual penal systems.
There are many state­ments made on this issue to the effect that peo­ple should be allowed to prac­tice their craft whilst incarcerated.
That is a mat­ter for respec­tive leg­is­la­tures , yet I would not be sur­prised that some­thing as left lean­ing as this would become law in a place like Jamaica.

In oth­er coun­tries what­ev­er a pris­on­er gets out­side food, health­care and hous­ing has to be earned . This means that they are priv­i­leges not rights. In fact in many nations pris­on­ers are forced to work to earn their most basic keep, that includes the food they eat and oth­er costs accu­mu­lat­ed from hous­ing and car­ing for them.
Most impor­tant­ly, in the event a par­tic­u­lar con­vict has ‚through good behav­ior earned a priv­i­lege, say to record music, those priv­i­leges would be con­tin­gent with cer­tain pre­de­ter­mined cri­te­ria that good qual­i­ty-con­tent be adhered to.
News flash to the peo­ple who say it is cen­sor­ship. When you are a con­vict­ed crim­i­nal every­thing you do is censored.
Where,when and if you are allowed to sleep, eat and yes ‚where and when you shit.
Where do you believe your right to make or release music stand on that totem pole?

The ques­tion for the Jamaican Government is how much longer will it allow the tail to wag the dog?
This Prime Minister has had a year to detail with clar­i­ty, a path which out­lines with clear speci­fici­ty the Administration’s plan to get rid of crime.
To date there has not been a cogent or spe­cif­ic out­line which one could look at and rea­son­ably con­clude that the admin­is­tra­tion is seri­ous about crime.

Instead, what we have are band-aid approach­es and a bunch of Tom-fool­ery com­ing from the Prime Minister and even more so the Minister of National Security .
Be it under­stood that the Primary func­tion of any Government is the utmost safe­ty of it’s citizens.
How could this Administration come to Government with­out a leg­isla­tive agen­da which when enact­ed would imme­di­ate­ly bend the arc of crime, bring respect back for our insti­tu­tions and a sense that anar­chy would not be tolerated.
Out of that Agenda would emerge an econ­o­my where peo­ple in the dias­po­ra are con­vinced to return to invest ‚con­sumer con­fi­dence is up and for­eign investors bring in big mon­ey for invest­ment opportunities.
That is how an econ­o­my is built.

The Prime Minister is sad­ly delud­ed in believ­ing that his so called growth agen­da can be accom­plished if he adamant­ly refus­es to take a stand against crime. Nothing he has done on crime dif­fer­en­ti­ates his admin­is­tra­tion from the past administration.

Sooner or lat­er there will be change , whether the Prime Minister believes this or not is real­ly not up for debate any longer .
Jamaica will not be allowed to have a sit­u­a­tion in which almost 1600 peo­ple are mur­dered each year. Countless amounts of women and young girls raped and sodom­ized, and crim­i­nals do pret­ty much what they please because the lead­er­ship is too con­sumed with it’s own abil­i­ty to hold onto power .