CRITICISM of the police force on its failure to significantly dent crime in Jamaica has followed from the Police Commissioner's own statement at a Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) leadership function.
While we may be acknowledging the shortcomings in the latest crime plan, we must insist that all our public sector leaders continue to communicate and set out clear targets, where we can judge how successful they are in accounting for public funds.
Police Commissioner Francis Forbes may claim that he was misinterpreted as to whether his proposed twenty per cent reduction target in major crimes applied only to St. James or all of Jamaica, but it is something that he must be encouraged to continue doing. It comes with the territory of effective leadership. It is better that those in charge give an indicator as to specific targets that they wish to achieve, while in office, rather than have it open to others to speculate without knowing the peculiar circumstances or expertise involved in the respective sphere.
Take crime in Jamaica, for instance, where a lot of us are quick to criticise the police force's efforts at catching offenders (i.e. the so-called clearing up rate). A lot of us fail to co-operate with the police force or contribute to identification parades and then we blame the police force for ineffectiveness. If we have clear and discrete rates, articulated by the police force directorate as to past rates, and polices that they will entail to improve policing rates, we can then be in a better position to judge their effectiveness.
I can then decide whether having 800 murders a year is an acceptable rate rather than 100 murders, without questioning whether it is political violence or drug-induced or domestic related, in deciding why the clear-up rate is not higher than it should be (regardless of whether I feel 100 murders per year in Jamaica is still too high a figure for this island).
SET CLEAR TARGETS
Our public leaders must set out clear targets as to what they intend to achieve under their watch for the year.
This might sometimes lead to much criticism as in this case with Police Commissioner Forbes. In the past, we had cases with the Minister of Development Dr. Paul Robertson, when he headed the investment portfolio and his investment pipeline 'ran short', or technology minister Philip Paulwell, with his overly ambitious job target for the Information Technology sector. Then there was the Minister of Finance and Planning, Dr. Omar Davies with his many missed targets, so that Dr. Davies now tries to be as ambiguous as possible in spelling out economic targets or stipulating his economic assumptions about exchange rate movement, interest rate levels and likely NIR level, without having fall-back statements (like world oil prices or Iraq war etc.)
If the targets are not attained, at least we can set out clear indicators as to what is desired in the future. Failure does not mean that we cannot try again, to set more realistic and attainable targets.
