Horace Levy | So-so ZOSO isn’t a cure-all

Two wrong notions in this week's Parliament's talk about the ZOSOs just have to be knocked. One is the nonsensical notion that the 'plan' is to tackle murderous violence community by community. Really? And how many years will that take? While murders continue to rocket up by 20 per cent across the rest of the country? As the PNP spokespersons make it very clear, this is just NOT acceptable. It is Jamaica's people who are dying and traumatised.

Isn't it obvious that two ZOSOs, or even four, as currently constructed to each require 300 to 400 soldiers and police, is not cutting it? Why? Because, to begin with, the human resources are limited. But face it: We are on a path to another 1,600-1,800 murders in 2018. Another route has to be chosen, and chosen now.

Which brings up the second crazy notion - that it is the advice of the security forces that decides what to do about our violence and murder, that it is not a political decision. It IS a political decision, not the partisan kind of politics, but politics. Leave it to the police and the army and only one kind of solution emerges. That is more of only, or chiefly, the tried-and-failed REPRESSION.

But no long-term solution to murder can lie chiefly in repression. Repression is part of the answer, the short-term step. But the principal part has to be PREVENTION. Prevention means SOCIAL intervention. This is your POLITICAL decision, Mr Prime Minister and Mr Opposition Leader. It is time you politicians learned to listen.

Concretely, that could mean a new kind of ZOSO. Let's call it a ZOSSI: zone of special social intervention, where the balance between repression and intervention is tilted to the second element. That would be a security post of 15 to 20 soldiers and police (solving their human-power problem), and a social post of seven to 10 violence interrupters and social workers from civil society (coupled with substantial private- and public-sector infrastructure input).

An aggressive 'plan' would be to do this in 30 to 40 volatile and potentially vulnerable communities. And do it IMMEDIATELY. Selection would be the joint task of a combined security, bipartisan and civil-society committee. Sixteen hundred to 1,800 murders must NOT be allowed to happen in 2018.

The alternative is military coup, isn't it? A country built on an oversize security force, another kind of obesity. Let's go.

- Horace Levy is a human-rights campaigner. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.