Traffic Ticket Amnesty Exacerbates Problem Not Stop It…

In a recent forum, I spoke to the lie that pover­ty is the dri­ver of crime in Jamaica.
I sought to debunk that myth by argu­ing that there is absolute­ly no evi­dence to sup­port the idea that pover­ty is the dri­ver of crime as it is in Jamaica.
ZERO !!!

If that were true the poor­est nations would be the most vio­lent and mur­der­ous nations.
Admittedly pet­ty thieves and oth­er hus­tling has some con­nec­tion to pover­ty, not the heinous killings we are see­ing in Jamaica.
The killings in Jamaica stems from a cou­ple of things.
(1) Societal and Governmental acquiescence.
(2) Greed.
(3) Political pro­tec­tion of crim­i­nals. et al.

Cuba which is 90 miles from our shores and a pop­u­la­tion of 12 mil­lion peo­ple well over four times that of Jamaica has far less crime even though the stan­dard of liv­ing of Jamaicans is far higher.

Vietnam. Indonesia. Ghana, most African nations not con­trolled by ter­ror­ists, you name it, all of the real­ly poor nations have low­er per capi­ta crime than Jamaica does.
Conversely, if we look at nations like Mexico, (pre­vi­ous­ly in Colombia), Guatemala, Sub-Saharan Africa where Terrorism has tak­en over as it has in Jamaica, it is as a result of Government cor­rup­tion and hin­drance of the forces of law and order to do their jobs.

GREED
The greed I allud­ed to tran­scend the aver­age thugs who are mur­der­ing peo­ple for their prop­er­ty, those who kill for the ill-got­ten spoils of the lot­to scam trade it extends to the Government’s myopic sch­enes to draw in large sums of cash from the pub­lic with­out giv­ing thought to the con­se­quences going forward.

.….….……

Last year the gov­ern­ment grant­ed a Traffic Ticket Amnesty, in which out­stand­ing tick­ets issued between September 1, 2010, and July 31, 2017, could be paid with­out penalties.The three-month amnesty took effect on August 2, 2017.
The ini­tia­tive by the gov­ern­ment was aimed at increas­ing rev­enue by col­lect­ing the out­stand­ing amounts owed by delin­quent motorists.

Minister of National Security Robert Montague told the House of Representatives in July 2017 that data showed out­stand­ing traf­fic tick­ets totaled $2.2 billion.
Additionally, there is approx­i­mate­ly $566 mil­lion in out­stand­ing pay­ments owed to the courts by motorists who con­test­ed the offense and were fined after being found guilty up to December 31, 2016.

Tax Administration Jamaica con­firmed that approx­i­mate­ly $300 mil­lion was col­lect­ed since the start of the amnesty, the sec­ond in the last five years. About $340 mil­lion was col­lect­ed in the first amnesty in ²⁰¹²⁄₁₃.(observer.com)

.….….…

SOCIETAL AND GOVERNMENTAL ACQUIESCENCE

As the crime rate bur­geons out of con­trol, it is evi­dent that the Administration is deter­mined to take actions which will have long-term neg­a­tive con­se­quences for the rule of law.
This will con­tin­ue to place the lives of the mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces and the aver­age cit­i­zens at fur­ther risks.

As the Government has done using the Ministry of Justice and Delroy Chuck to offer mind­less mass mur­der­ers mas­sive con­ces­sions for plead­ing guilty, so too is Robert Montague being used to take short­cuts in the inter­est of cash, while the long-term con­se­quences gath­er like an omi­nous storm cloud on the dis­tant horizon.

The images of motorists fight­ing with police offi­cers who seek to bring san­i­ty to the mass chaos of the indis­ci­plined road­ways are real.
It is a jun­gle of mad­ness in which offi­cers place their lives on the line sim­ply by ask­ing a bus dri­ver or ille­gal taxi-oper­a­tor to move from one loca­tion to another.
Offering amnesty to these offend­ers flies in the face of the hard work of these officers.

POLITICAL PROTECTION OF CRIMINALS

It is a rapa­cious and short-sight­ed approach which is stu­pid, regres­sive and down­right retarded.
Traffic tick­et amnesty does noth­ing but empow­ers traf­fic offend­ers to ignore pay­ing for their tick­ets and sim­ply await the next amnesty, upon which they are giv­en a mas­sive dis­count for thumb­ing their noses at the laws.

It rewards offend­ers not just for the traf­fic offense they ini­tial­ly com­mit­ted but for ignor­ing pay­ing for the tick­et afterward.
The sim­ple solu­tion is to sus­pend their dri­ver’s licens­es, make it impos­si­ble for them to reg­is­ter their vehi­cles and sub­ject them to arrest when­ev­er they are caught.

Why won­der why there is cor­rup­tion in the police depart­ment when the admin­is­tra­tion thwart the efforts of the police at every turn?