Making the country safe

As A follow-up observation to the third of “one dozen effective actions” for “one safe nation” being advocated by Communities Mobilising Against Crime and carried by this column last week, Jamaica, with 300 killings for the year, has done a similar thing: bring in a Scotland Yard detective with 29 years of crime-fighting experience as its deputy commissioner of police.

This craving after foreigners to help us do what we could and should be doing for ourselves is not something this columnist agrees with; in fact he is decidedly against it. Nevertheless the column is devoting space to CMAC and indeed readers everywhere to have their say on “what we go do” to take back this country from the criminals.

Fourth proposed effective action: ensure there are at least three vehicles at each police station to service citizens when they call for help. CMAC estimates that to secure the vehicles and have them in working condition would cost $34 million a year. “Small price for a safe nation,” states the document.

Vehicle shortage and indeed a complete absence of them from certain stations is one of the perennial problems used as an excuse by officers uninspired to counter crime, perhaps even by those who are in fear of the criminals. If each station is so staffed of vehicles, the excuses become invalid and will give the management of the service an opportunity to deal with those not suited to the task.

Adequately satisfying the need of the police to be mobile will also put additional pressure on the Commissioner as under the CMAC plan he would be directly accountable to the Minister of National Security for the management of the service and its resources.

Five: establish municipal police forces with officers who will have intimate knowledge of communities, the good and the bad people of the area and so be in a position to counter criminal activity. You know the story, everyone else knows the drug bloc except the police.

Six: CMAC is calling for the country’s criminal justice system to achieve DNA testing capacity and to update the forensic equipment that now exists. This ties in with the observation stated in last week’s column that a percentage of the officers now patrolling beats should be trained in scientific methods of fighting crime.

Speeding up the justice system is number seven. In this respect CMAC is calling on the Chief Justice to “issue strong guidelines to all judges and magistrates to take into account the nation’s crisis and to be less tolerant with those charged with serious crimes such as murders, kidnappings, possession if illegal weapons and road deaths.”

Two related effective actions require the Government to provide “significant additional funding and more spending autonomy for the judiciary with the necessary accountability mechanisms in place” and to allocate funding for the building and renovation of magistrates’ courts and the hiring of additional magistrates. Lawyers in San Fernando and other magisterial districts have demonstrated that need.

The most recent of several reports on the state of the magistracy by Justice Mark Mohammed outlines the serious physical and operational problems of a magistracy that handles something like 90 per cent of all matters.

“Why catch criminals if we cannot convict them because our courts are too slow or cannot handle the trials,” states CMAC. Effective action number 10 touches on a sensitive matter: replace well-meaning and hard-working police prosecutors with “more legally qualified, trained and well-paid public prosecutors who can secure a high rate of conviction,” advocates CMAC.

And while there is much value in that suggestion, there certainly must be a case too for recruiting and hiring experienced private prosecutors to avoid as far as possible state cases being so palpably weak that they are thrown out even though those charged seemingly have a case to answer.

Keeping dangerous criminals off the streets seems an obvious and logical requirement, says CMAC. The organisation says “prison reform, including the improvement of prison conditions, full utilisation of the new Maximum Security Prison facilities and rehabilitation” must be a priority.

This proposal could engage debate amongst citizens who feel that the jails are not hotels and should have a deterrent effect on criminal activity. Yes, jail conditions must not serve to encourage recidivism, but the conditions in prison, including the association of young first-time offenders with hardened criminals, are known to allow the older people to recruit, train and influence young people into life-long careers as criminals.

Having spent time in cells with up to a dozen criminals must so dehumanise young men to the point where they feel themselves locked-in to criminal activity by a society that does not allow for a mistake and the opportunity for rehabilitation. “Our entire prison service and its rehabilitation system needs to be overhauled and brought into the 21st century,” states CMAC.

That many prison officers are themselves open to corrupt practices and to assisting criminals to carry out their nefarious activities is undoubtedly because of individual greed, but that kind of behaviour must have a connection to the environment of decay that exists behind those walls, sucking everyone into the vortex.

The final of the 12 effective actions of CMAC turns attention on carnage on the roadways of the country. Heavier fines, the possible loss of licence privileges as well as compulsory drivers’ education programmes could take care of some of the wildness seen on the roads, states CMAC.

In instances seen every day, this columnist often wishes that ordinary constables on the beat had power to summarily suspend licences for long stretches of time—maybe draconian but one wonders if the time has not yet come for such measures to meet the times.

Those therefore are the “dozen effective actions” put forward by CMAC to counter crime. They range through better equipping the police, tasking the Commissioner and close-marking him, targeting the “rogue cops,” fixing the criminal justice system, inclusive of upgrading quality staff and physical conditions, massive rehabilitation of the prisons with the Government investing additional sums to achieve the goals.

And although nothing of a social and educational programme of measures to veer young people away from a life of crime makes the top-12 list, CMAC members being sensible people must certainly understand that to guide another generation away from crime is a major factor.

This column is quite willing to accommodate this attempt by citizens’ organisations and individuals to keep the Government constantly reminded of the reality that we are close to the brink.

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